This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

I keep on falling in. At the age of 14, Alicia Keys was offered a recording contract, a deal from Columbia Records that came along with a baby grand piano.

That was nearly three decades ago.

Since then, she's won 16 grammies for songs that might give you the feeling of

classic pop from the 60s and 70s

along with the R&B and hip-hop of our own time.

In 2022, a recording industry group named her the number one R&B artist of the millennium.

Keyes is also very much the voice of New York

Empire State of Mind which she

recorded with Jay-Z has become the city's unofficial anthem with all due respect to

Frank Sinatra and even her sense of humor struck me as quintessential New York.

We're recording and he said that the level looks fantastic.

It's going to be the most phenomenal level you ever had.

She's just a girl and she's on fire.

I was talking with Alicia Keys about Hell's Kitchen.

It's a musical that incorporates her songs

to tell a story about a teenager growing up in that neighborhood of Manhattan near Times Square.

The show ran first at the public theater and it's now in previews for Broadway.

I've got to ask you your opening soon. Are you nervous as hell?

You know I don't feel nervous. I feel really really excited. Hell's kitchen has been such a

moment in the making for so long that I'm in all. I'm in all of the process.

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