In a new interview with The Cut magazine, Alicia Keys got real about getting older.
She shared, "I love getting smarter. I love being more conscious. I love being aware of what I think...I love being in touch with what I think and being comfortable knowing that what I know is the right thing for me, that I don't have to seek so much validation from everybody else to decide if that's a good thing for me or not."
Alicia, 42, first started embracing her natural beauty in a more meaningful way after she went makeup-free in 2016.
"It opened my eyes to how I didn’t feel comfortable or beautiful if I didn’t have my armor on, and if I didn’t have all my face and hair and pretty things and nice clothes on that somehow I was less than beautiful or just less than. I realized, like, Whoa, what’s underneath all that?"
She wants others to step into aging with power, as she believes that "you get more beautiful as you grow older" because "your heart opens more" and "you have a quality about you that is so much stronger in a way."
See more of Alicia in some behind-the-scenes footage from her recent Keys to the Summer tour below: