Happy birthday, Alicia Keys! As the Grammy award-winning singer celebrates turning 34, HELLO! Online takes a look at what the stars have in store for Alicia and you… This is what Alicia who is an Aquarius, can be expecting today:
People who act with supreme confidence frequently perform acts of supreme stupidity. The doubts, the uncertainties and even the fears that you are now experiencing may not be creating a great sense of pleasure... but, if they are drawing your attention to a genuine cause for concern, they are working in your favour. Only by treating this delicate issue with due deference are you going to safely avoid trouble. That means having the humility to concede a possible error, even if this briefly hurts your pride. Click here to read your horoscope
Alicia Keys was born in 1981 and after her parents split when she was just two, she was raised by her mum in the tough Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood of New York. Singing since she could speak, she started piano lessons aged seven, and by the age of 12, Alicia was studying at New York's Professional Performing Arts School to study voice, dance and jazz piano. In 1996, the aspiring vocalist graduated two years early and first in her class, a scholarship to Columbia University followed, but, with a recording contract already under her belt, she dropped out of school after a month in order to pursue a singing career with Columbia Records. When the company's founder and president Clive Davis (famed for discovering such voices as Janis Joplin and Whitney Houston) retired, he set up a new label, J Records, and took the talented singer-songwriter with him. This changed the focus of Alicia's career, and she soon made appearances on the soundtracks for Men In Black and the remake of Shaft, but it was her first full-fledged release, the soulful Songs In A Minor that took her to the top of the charts in 2001 and garnered her five Grammy Awards.
Her second album, The Diary Of Alicia Keys was released in December 2003 and immediately took the number one spot in the US Billboard chart. In 2005 her star was still clearly in the ascendant as she scooped four Grammy Awards. Later releases have faired equally well. Her third album As I Am debuted at number one in the US in 2007 and went on to sell six million copies worldwide. Two years later she released The Element of Freedom, which went in at number two in the US, but became the first of her discs to top the UK album chart.
The star filmed her first major movie roles in 2006 alongside Scarlett Johansson in The Nanny Diaries and Ben Affleck in Smokin' Aces. She later appeared in The Secret Life of Bees with Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson. One of America's most prodigious talents, she is also committed to humanitarian causes, and is a spokeswoman for the charity Keep A Child Alive and has visited Africa regularly to highlight the AIDS endemic. In May 2010 she revealed she was expecting a baby with her music presenter boyfriend Swizz Beats,a nd the pair later married in July of that year. The pair welcomed their first child - Egypt Daoud Dean - in October, and in December 2014 the pair announced the birth of their second son - Genesis Ali Dean.
