Alicia Keys

A self-proclaimed "old soul" with the songs to prove it, Alicia Keys sounds like she's caught in a time warp between today's beat-savvy R&B and the warm, crackly golden age of jazz and soul that made Blue Note and Motown household names. Of course, it helps that she's been writing songs since she was 14 — scoring nine GRAMMYS® by the time she was 25, for such standout selections as her gently shuffling breakthrough single, "Fallin'", and the haunting, piano-led "You Don't Know My Name".

Keys puts on her collaborative hat, in Next Steps.

The towering success of Alicia Keys' striking, six times platinum Songs in A Minor makes it hard to remember the other standout surprises from her immensely satisfying career to date: "Ghetto Story Chapter 2" is a rough and ready reggae jam, "America the Beautiful" is a horn-blasted changing of the guard between Keys and Ray Charles, and the title track from Beninese singer Angélique Kidjo's 2007 album Djin Djin (also featuring Branford Marsalis) is stroke of melting-pot genius.

Alicia Keys has come a long way: the commercial and critical success of her career since her smash 2001 debut, Songs in A Minor (which sold more than 50,000 copies the day it was released), has been downright awe-inspiring, from her expectation-shattering sophomore album, The Diary of Alicia Keys (featuring connect-the-infuences collaborations with Kanye West, Timbaland, and Tony Toni! Toné!), to the palette-expanding experiments of 2007's As I Am. It's abundantly clear that Keys knows no boundaries — that, in her music, we'll always be able to hear everyone from stone-cold legends (Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday) to similarly minded contemporaries (Angie Stone, Joss Stone). All that, and Bond theme "Another Way to Die" too . . . sensational.