Alicia Keys is a singer-songwriter.. She began her career in entertainment with an appearance on 'The Cosby Show' at the age of four.. Keys had already attracted the attention of record company executives during her high school years, and after what amounted to a bidding war for her talents, she signed with Arista Records in 1998.. While she was accepted to Columbia University on a full scholarship, she only did four weeks before leaving to dedicate herself fully to music.. In 1999, Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records, left the company to start J Records. Keys decided to follow Davis, who had engineered the careers of such soul luminaries as Aretha Franklin, to his new label. Unlike many of her pop-music contemporaries, the precocious Keys not only sings, but writes and produces her own music. At J Records, Keys found the freedom to complete her debut effort, which included material she had started work on years prior.. At the 2002 Grammy Awards, Keys took home awards for Song of the Year, Best R&B Song, Best R&B Album, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Best New Artist. Keys fronted for fellow R&B sensation Maxwell in 2001.. Her album "Diary" won her four Grammys in 2005. It sold in excess of 618,000 copies in its first week, a record at the time, and it went on to sell eight million copies worldwide, which made it the second biggest-selling album by an R&B artist.. In 2007, Keys made her debut film appearance as an assassin named Georgia Sykes in the crime thriller Smokin' Aces. The singer used the intense training she had to undergo for the film as a platform to train to run a marathon. She later described the feat as the "weirdest sensation".. Her fourth album, The Element of Freedom, was released in 2009 and was the first of Key's records to hit the number one spot in the UK Albums Chart.. Keys met her future husband record producer Swizz Beatz when the pair wrote and produced Million Dollar Bill for Whitney Houston's album, I Look to You. In May 2010, the couple confirmed they were engaged and were expecting a child together. Egypt Daoud Dean was born on October 14, 2010 in New York.. Alicia Keys currently serves as BlackBerry's new Global Creative Director.
