Idolator

"Odds are this retirement will be more like a Jay-Z retirement."

/fixed

Clive's minions have probably been working her too hard on this record. (Understandable, since she's saving multiple Sony BMG quarters.) She'll bounce back after the current promo cycle is over. Remember when an exhausted Chris Martin said, after 6-12 months' worth of X&Y promotion, that Coldplay weren't coming back for "a long, long time" (like, half a decade, or so they claimed)?

(Insert joke by haters of Coldplay and Alicia Keys here.)

I dunno, sounds good to me. 30 can't get here fast enough.

It's probably just a fetish for old, mystical shit. Stonehenge and Easter Island are probably on her hit list. Blender [www.blender.com] hinted at it:

Finally, in a maneuver reminiscent of Dave Chappelle, Keys booked a flight to Egypt. She didn't tell her label she was going AWOL, just bought a ticket, and 48 hours later she was in a first-class cabin, headed to Cairo by herself. She floated down the Nile in a boat, toured ancient temples, swam in the Red Sea and, yep, climbed to the top of a pyramid and started singing. "The strength of a place like that," Keys says, "the stone, what it took to build, the time-it's infectious."

I don't understand why she doesn't just save her PTOs and just take a 3-week vacation after the busy season.