Alicia Keys felt "so uncomfortable" and "unclear" during her 20s.
Alicia Keys
The 39-year-old musician enjoyed huge success with her 2001 debut album 'Songs in A Minor', but Alicia wouldn't return to her 20s even if someone paid her.
She shared: "I swear, I wouldn't go back to being 20 if somebody paid me - it was literally the worst time ever.
"I wanted to fit in so desperately. I was so blind, so dependent on everybody else's opinions, so uncomfortable, so unclear."
Alicia's issues came to a head in 2006, when she suffered an emotional meltdown during a photo shoot.
The New York-born star responded to the situation by cancelling her engagements and embarking on a solo pilgrimage to Egypt.
Speaking to the July issue of InStyle magazine, she said: "It was either get the hell away or just explode."
Around the same time, Alicia wrote a series of empowering tracks.
But in retrospect, she admits they were written in part to drag herself "out of a rut".
She said: "There hasn't been one that I wrote because I actually believed it at the time. I needed to pull myself out of a rut or a place of confusion."
However, over time, Alicia realised that her "humility was sometimes a mask for self-worth issues".
The award-winning singer - who has Egypt, nine, and Genesis, five, with her husband, hip-hop star Swizz Beatz - explained: "I was kind of cutting off my blessings.
"But I started to recognise, 'Wow, I have this wrong' ... Swizz is such a wild dreamer, and he loves beautiful art, beautiful clothes, and things that are well made.
"I've learned that I can totally remain humble but I don't have to cut off the wonderful things that I deserve."
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