Building on the success of her previous album, "Songs in A-Minor", with a more mature idea of song building and a greater dedication to producing fantastic soul was how I heard "The Diary of Alicia Keys" being reviewed. Truth be told, it is a fairly patchy album. The worst parts of the album would be the starting point, as there are only really two. "Streets of New York" featuring Nas and Rakim is a brief, slightly bland hip-hop track that is saved only by it's protagonists voice. Unfortunately, the soul-artist-doing-hip-hop thing is played better by people like Angie Stone who did a fantastic rap bonus track on her latest album (which was romping good fun). In comparison, Keys seems to fall kinda short here.
The other downfall is "So Simple" for it's abysmal chipmunk-through-a-vocoder sound that has been created when some sound engineer fiddled with Keys' otherwise superb voice. It sounds a bit like the work of a "dodgy DJ Dave" who spends his day fiddling with knobs and buttons for his enjoyment, and then does the same at night on a funfair in Ipswich. Whatever creative thought went in to that has been destroyed by the near unlistenable result. Which is a shame, because the song could be really good without over-produced knob-twiddling.
The rest of the album wavers between okay and great. The former being tracks like "Karma" and the latter being "You Don't Know My Name" (yes, that one which was a single) and "Diary" (featuring the ever-excellent Tony! Toni! Toné!, proving that they still exist post-Lucy Pearl etc.) which scarily resembles some other soul song I like but can't remember which one.
Some of the tracks have these rather nice jazz overtones. One of these is "Feeling U, Feeling Me", an interlude which sploshes out a bit of Herbie Hancock, brews up some of Miles' "Bitches Brew", seasons it with a touch of John McLaughlin and then splatters Keys' fantastic voice on top (one thing: Hancock, Davis and McLaughlin are all there in spirit and soul only).
"Samsonite Man" feels like Sade at the peak of Diamond Life while "When You Love Someone" drops off slightly. What can be extrapolated from this evidence and the fineries of "Songs In A-Minor" is that Alicia Keys is someone who performs best on soul. Although hip-hop led to her popularity, and some tracks (like "Fallin'" from A-minor) use her hip-hop sensibilities to their best, for me "Diary of Alicia Keys" proves that her talent lies in soul. Hip-hop got her to where she is now. Soul is what can take her forward. And this album has some quite fine examples of it, but I'm not sure it's worth the £11.99 price tag nor the aggravating copy prevention naffness.
And at the risk of breaking the freedom-crushing European Union Copyright Directive, I'd like to make two statements. One is that this CD has some quite interesting results if you use it with Mac OS X and iTunes. Play with some of the facilities of iTunes (the 'Rip' part of 'Rip, mix, burn' to be more specific) and see what happens. The second is that marker pens work in mysterious ways. Obviously, you shouldn't try and make MP3's of this CD in iTunes on OS X and you should never ever use marker pens. They're naughty, remember.
If you're considering buying this, I'd think hard about it. The tracks aren't actively bad, just fairly mediocre. There are some prize gems, but I'm not sure whether the gems are worth the cost of the rough tracks. If you can find them online as MP3's or similar, it might be cheaper to buy just the tracks you like. As a result, I give it three stars.
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I think it probably is a grower. It feels more like a collection of songs rather than a coherent album. That is the problem these days where the average album has twelve 'producers' that the coherence of an album is lost, and is replaced with a long list of hit singles.
Thanks for the comments everyone.
BabyGirl 19.01.2004 16:29
I think I prefer "Songs in a minor" to this, although I think it'll grow on me after a while! :D xx
unnameable 18.01.2004 21:37
good review :) couldn't stand her recent single, so I doubt I'd like the album at all! Marc
Whereas Alicia Keys's debut was in essence a musical overview that recorded snapshots of ... more
her life over the five years it took to complete, her follow up,The Diary Of, is the scribbled footnotes of the very busy two years since. She's certainly kept tab...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Jan 18th, 2004
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