By Isoul H. Harris, Photographs: Antoine Verglas, Styled by Ise Michelle White

our days have passed since I was supposed to talk to Alicia Augello-Cook. Okay, you know her better as nine-time-Grammy-winning singer/musician Alicia Keys. She is a difficult woman to pin down, and understandably so. Since emerging in 2001 with her debut album Songs in A Minor, which sold 11 million copies, she has been in nonstop demand. Whether it's taping an upcoming ABC Sesame Streetholiday special with other superstars such as Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson and rocker Sheryl Crow or placing the finishing touches on her wildly anticipated third studio album, As I Am(set for a November release), her life is a bit more engaged and fuller than that of your typical 27-year-old.

Having traded days of e-mails, telephone calls and BlackBerry texts with her label publicist and personal assistant, our time finally arrives. "Hi, how are you? Sorry for the delay," says Keys in her trademark throaty tone that's colored today with a disarming sweetness. It seems that the native New Yorker (she has two homes in the city) is in London, and despite having been there countless times before, she is finally enjoying it this time around. "Every time that I have visited before, I have never had enough time to really feel it. I am still working this time, but I am walking around and getting a feel for it. For once, I am not rushing from one city to the next."

The first time I met Alicia Keys, four months before 9/11, she was hurrying from city to city. It was the eve of her debut release, and everyone from Toledo to Tokyo was convinced that Clive Davis—the fabled music Svengali credited with guiding Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen and Whitney Houston to superstardom—had discovered the "next big thing." Keys, barely legal at the time, looked a bit different then. Her fair skin was noticeably affected with acne and her healthy curves were in glaring opposition to the typical size most female entertainers aspire to be. "I was thrust into a world driven by appearance," Keys says now of her early years. "This is more of a superficial world, but my spirit is not of that fabric, so it was a little uncomfortable. I was a girl from the street just trying to do her thing. When I first started, all of the women out there were real glamour pusses. Where was the girl representing me? Stylists would come at me with seven-inch stilettos, but I wanted to wear Timberlands!" But Keys says she has become comfortable in her skin over the years: "I am less rigid and more open to different experiences now."

She has lost her once-trademark tomboy-chic look (replete with braids and cornrows) and currently displays a new sense of sophistication. Yet her work ethic has remained the same ...

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