Alicia Keys says her new album is a 'powerful sonic and lyrical journey'

Musician Alicia Keys has opened up about her forthcoming new album in a new interview with Citizens of Humanity.

She explained that she never intended to leave four years between albums (her last release was 2012's 'Girl On Fire'), but she learned a lot during the accidental hiatus and it ended up being an "important" time in her life:

"So I was like this album is going to come out real quick. And then I found out that I was having a baby—my youngest, Genesis—and that put a different time spin on things. And then it became kind of an exercise in patience, and that was really important for me because it allowed me to look at the album. ... So it wasn’t intentional and it wasn’t really meant to be a hiatus, but I guess it turned into that a little bit. I imagine a hiatus is when you’re on a beach, and I can’t recall a moment like that."

"The music for this album was created so fast—the fastest I’ve ever created music before. It was like raining down every night, like storms of music was just coming out. It was crazy because I never experienced creating like that; I came in already knowing what I wanted to start to talk about. I knew the topics that I wanted to address and I knew who I wanted to assemble to help me create this very powerful sonic and lyrical journey."

Keys added: "So everything I did was with so much intention that when the music began it made sense that it just came so fast. We did probably 30 songs in like 10 days."

Watch her video for 'In Common' here: