Alicia Keys on #NoMakeUp: Women feel we need to please everyone

Alicia Keys is back with a brand new single and an all-new attitude.

The US singer dropped into BBC 1Xtra Breakfast to discuss her huge new tune In Common and the importance of the word 'no'.

It's not just Meghan Trainor turning this negative into a positive in 2016.

After launching her #NoMakeUp movement, she says women struggle to say no because they are so busy trying to make everyone else happy.

"You are allowed to say no," she tells Yasmin Evans.

"As women, we get into this wild habit where we feel we have to please everybody and make sure everyone feels so good"

"But we never looks at ourselves and ask if we're OK."

Watch Alicia's In Common video.

Alicia is currently recording her sixth studio album and promises it will be the best record of her 16-year career.

She also claims fans will see a more exposed and more vulnerable side to her personality.

"It's hard to be raw," she tells. "It's hard to be completely vulnerable, I feel we are taught to be completely otherwise in society."

Alicia Keys has enjoyed a hugely successful career since her 2001 breakthrough

Fans have already seen a more vulnerable side to the soul superstar, after she teamed up with photographer Paola Kudacki for a series make-up free shots.

The photos are for the new album and also launch Alicia's #NoMakeUp movement.

She also posed without make-up for Fault magazine

She has revealed how Paola's pictures turned her insecurities into a newfound confidence.

"Every time I left the house, I would be worried," she writes in an open letter.

"If I didn't put on makeup: What if someone wanted a picture?? What if they POSTED it???

"These were the insecure, superficial, but honest thoughts I was thinking.

"All of it, one way or another, was based too much on what other people thought of me."

Alicia also went without make-up in her In Common video

Alicia says she was shocked when Paolo first wanted to snap her straight from the gym, but immediately loved the photos.

"I don't want to cover up any more," she writes. "Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing."

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