Oh, Happy J

The following is an excerpt from a feature that appears in EW's August 10, 2001, issue.

Even on New York's harried Fifth Avenue, this summer's breakout pop star stands out: the wraparound purple shades, the cornrows with braids flapping in the breeze, the head bobbing with an everything's-aiiight ease. ''I will always do this,'' Alicia Keys says during a late-afternoon stroll. ''Even if I have two or three bodyguards with me, I'll always walk down the street.''

The remark is momentarily jarring: Keys' first album, ''Songs in A Minor,'' has been out only two days, and she's already mulling over security forces.

Her stroll, as it turns out, is brief. Keys returns to the nearby offices of J Records; off comes her denim jumpsuit, on come black leather pants, a low-cut top, and a spangled pimpette fedora, all in preparation for a brief performance at the nearby Niketown. Keys and her handlers walk a block to the sneaker-theme-park store, where 2,000 people are wedged in or waiting to get in. Matters are equally chaotic on stage: Settled in behind the piano, Keys openly chides the sound engineer because she can't hear herself over the boisterous crowd. The kinks worked out, she begins to play, and transforms into part Stevie Wonder (the head sway, the braids), part Mariah Carey (the trills), part conservatory student (the keyboard chops). Ten minutes into the set, she starts ''Fallin','' her hit pop-gospel single, and the crowd thrusts its collective hands in the air. ''This has been a really great week for me,'' Keys effuses. With that, guards escort her out through the crowd and into a waiting car.

Five days later, Keys' album -- to the amazement of just about the entire music business -- enters the Billboard chart at No. 1. ''All the stars do seem to be aligned,'' says the J executive who signed Keys to her deal. Yes, sometimes they do. But often, it takes someone to grab them and make certain they're in order. This summer Clive Davis and the staff of his new label, J, are doing just that.

''If you ask, are there regrets?'' Clive Davis says. ''Of course!'' Sitting in his earth-toned Fifth Avenue office, the 69-year-old legend looks more elegant penguin than dandy, and his Brooklyn roots are evident, the way ''anger'' becomes ''an-ga.'' ''You can feel like 'Oh, my God, how will I survive this?''' he continues. ''That was never my attitude. And unexpected things that take place can come out for the better.'' By now, those ''unexpected things'' are part of music industry lore. In late 1999, Davis -- then president of Arista Records, a label he'd founded 25 years before and built into a hit conveyor belt responsible for the platinum-plus careers of Whitney Houston, Barry Manilow, and TLC, to name a few -- was on a high with Santana's left-field comeback ''Supernatural.'' But Bertelsmann AG, Arista's German-owned parent company, wasn't so happy. Davis, already past the age at which many Bertelsmann employees retire, stubbornly refused to name a successor, so the corporation devised a plan to kick him upstairs once his Arista contract expired (in June 2000) and, as a peacekeeping gesture, launch a joint-venture label with him. Depending on the source, Davis was either humiliated or filled with hubris in what turned out to be a very public struggle with Bertelsmann over stewardship of Arista and money issues.

Finally, in August 2000, three months after Bertelsmann anointed LaFace CEO L.A. Reid as Davis' Arista heir, the two parties announced the launch of Davis' J Records: what Davis dubbed ''an instant major,'' to be funded with 170 million Bertelsmann dollars. ''We ended up where we wanted to,'' says a former Bertelsmann exec involved in the negotiations. ''It was just more uncomfortable getting there than we would have liked.''

Within weeks, Davis began plotting his new label with the Arista executives who'd left with him. The label (named after Davis' middle name, Jay) soon had 50 employees and a few signings, including the made-for-TV boy band O-Town and rapper Olivia. Bertelsmann also allowed Davis to take with him a few second-tier Arista acts, including Keys and the pop trio LFO. This May, after months spent working out of hotels and Davis' Manhattan apartment, the company moved into renovated offices. Today, on its first anniversary, J offers something for everyone: young R&B singers (Keys, Jimmy Cozier), pop acts (O-Town, LFO), veterans both pop (Luther Vandross) and rap (Busta Rhymes, Erick Sermon), and deals with Wyclef Jean and producer Swizz Beatz. Even without Keys' uncommon success, J's track record has made the industry take notice: O-Town's oozy ''All or Nothing'' is the summer's big ballad, Cozier's ''She's All I Got'' landed in the Top 40, and Vandross' eponymous album entered at No. 6 in July.