Alicia Keys

A self-proclaimed "old soul" with the songs to prove it, Alicia Keys is in her twenties but 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'," the haunting, piano-led "You Don't Know My Name," the high-note-nailing "If I Ain't Got You," and the chart-topping Usher collaboration, "My Boo," a Jermaine Dupri production with palpitating drums and a stirring Love Unlimited Orchestra sample.

As for what's happened before and after all those accolades, our Next Steps boasts a fine collection of remixes, guest spots, live performances, and catalog-spanning cuts.

The towering success of Alicia Keys' striking, six-times-platinum Songs In A Minor makes it hard to remember her true debut: the tinkling piano keys and honeyed melodies of "Little Drummer Girl," a standout from Jermaine Dupri's Twelve Soulful Nights of Christmas compilation. It's not the only pleasant surprise of Keys' short but satisfying career, either: "Wild Horses" is an elegant Rolling Stones cover featuring Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine, "Diary (Hani Mix)" reimagines Keys as a dance-floor diva, "Ghetto Story Chapter 2" is a rough-and-ready reggae jam, "Someday We'll All Be Free" is spare and sparkling, and "America the Beautiful" is a horn-blasted changing of the guard between Keys and Ray Charles.

Oh, how Alicia Keys has grown: 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 the expectation-shattering #1 debut of her sophomore album, The Diary of Alicia Keys (featuring connect-the-influences collaborations with Kanye West, Timbaland, and Tony! Toni! Toné!), to the palette-expanding experiments of her 2007 platter, As I Am. About the latter, it features such unforeseen guests as John Mayer (the midnight-oil-burning "Lesson Learned") and Pink/Gwen Stefani/Christina Aguilera producer Linda Perry, who lent her Top 40 touch to such tracks as the neo-soul stunner "Superwoman." Between those songs and the rest of our playlist, 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).