Alicia J. Augello-Cook (born January 25, 1981), better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American R&B, soul, and neo soul singer-songwriter, pianist, and actress who has sold over 25 million albums worldwide as of 2007, and has won numerous awards, including fourteen Grammy Awards, eleven Billboard Music Awards, three American Music Awards, and fourteen NAACP Image Awards.
Keys was born in the Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, in New York City, New York, to Teresa "Terri" Augello, a paralegal and part-time actress, and Craig Cook, a flight attendant. Keys' mother is of Irish, Scottish, and Italian descent and her father is Jamaican. Keys describes herself as comfortable with her biracial heritage : "I grew up in New York, and thank God, I never had to go through that in regards to, 'You're not black enough, you're not white enough,' the whole kind of white/black-mixture thing. I never had to go through that. I went through prejudices and all, surely. But I never had to battle with those two parts of me."
