Alicia Keys' messy love triangle：How her career was affected

Hello everybody, welcome to the Impressive Channel. Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, and Swizz Beatz ex-wife Meshonda sat down together and did an interview on Good Morning America promoting Meshonda's new book called Blend. And the book is basically about blending families together and overcoming the hurdles that blended families go through. Now, this story is very interesting to me because it does have a lot of layers here. If you don't know, Swizz Beatz was married to Meshonda. Meshonda used to be a singer back in the day, but she got married to Swizz Beatz, who is a popular record producer, and they both had a child named Kasim. According to Meshonda, she and Swizz Beatz were both happily married. However, Alicia Keys serenaded Swizz Beatz and said, And you know what he did? He left Meshonda's arms and ran into Alicia Keys' arms. And that is how their marriage ended. Now, the breakup between Meshonda and Swizz Beatz was pretty public because Meshonda wrote an open letter to Alicia Keys after Alicia made some cryptic tweets about what love is. And she was trying to express her love for Swizz Beatz. However, Meshonda was not having it. In fact, she put Alicia Keys on blast and told the world what was really going on in this messy love triangle. Now, I'm going to read snippets of what she said. She said, If you're reading this, Alicia, let me start by saying you know what you did, you know the role you played, and you know how you contributed to the ending of my marriage. You know that I asked you to step back and let me handle my family issues, issues that you helped to create. I'm sorry to bring up all this mess, but I want y'all to get a backstory of what happened because Meshonda was really fed up about what happened. And she even opened up about it on Angela Yee's podcast. So things were fine in your marriage. You were good. So you thought. But then you found some credit card statements. You did see the credit card statements. I did. I will say I did. That's true. And it matched up with the tour that Alicia Keys was on. And you were like, hmm. But you didn't suspect anything was going on between them prior to that. Nope. So it was a complete shock. Totally shocked. And then you didn't think it was over though when that happened. You thought perhaps we can still work this out. We're married. I didn't think it was as serious as it was. Right. So how'd you find out it was serious? Because things weren't left. A lot left. One month after Meshonda and Swizz Beatz got a divorce, Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz got engaged. Alicia Keys told her side of the story to Essence Magazine, I was aware of all the false things that were being said about me. It definitely hurt. She also talked about her intoxicating love with Swizz Beatz. As you can see, the whole thing was very, very messy. And it was even messier when another woman named Jonna Sebastian came out and said that she also had a relationship and a child with Swizz Beatz while he was still married to Meshonda. So Swizz Beatz was out there laying it low and spreading it wide. And Meshonda had to deal with the pain of it all. But she did talk about having to put all of her pain aside and make sure that her son had a healthy relationship with his father, his stepmother Alicia, and his half siblings. The reason why she made that step is because she noticed that there was a change in her son. My son was around six years old. And I had a parent-teacher meeting. And, you know, they told me that he was struggling. He was being emotional. He was acting out. But it all boiled down to him grappling with our stuff. I mean, at first, we were all so emotional. You know, there are celebrities involved, so it was public, which amplified the pain and the embarrassment and the shame. So that created a lot of tension between us as well. It was really important for all three of us to realize, let's just start shifting this energy and making this what it needs to be for our children. It was really a wake-up call, like, we've got to do better. We've got to figure this out. And even if we don't want to for ourselves right now, we have to do it for him because he doesn't deserve this. Mashonda, Alicia Keys, and Swizz Beatz came to an understanding. And they worked everything out. Currently, they are successfully co-parenting their children. And I really think it's a nice story. It really is because it's a positive example to a lot of other people who are going through the same thing. And I know that there are a lot of people out there who are currently in the same position that Mashonda was in. And it's very hard for them to successfully co-parent because there's still some bitterness there. But Mashonda's story is a great example of how you can overcome a situation like this. Mashonda wasn't the only person that had to grow in this situation. Both Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys had to grow as well. And Alicia Keys, she did face a lot of backlash for having an affair with Swizz Beatz. I mean, a lot of backlash, to the point that it even affected her career because Alicia Keys was very successful. She won numerous Grammys. She had a lot of hits and she sold millions of records. Her first album, Songs in A Minor, sold like 6 million records worldwide. Her second album, Diary of Alicia Keys, sold like 10 million records worldwide. Her third album, As I Am, sold like 5 million records worldwide. And her fourth album, Element of Freedom, sold over 4 million records worldwide. She was consistently selling a lot of records. However, after the whole Mashonda and Swizz Beatz fiasco, her career did take somewhat of a decline. And of course, there were a lot of factors that were involved with that. I mean, for one, her record label, J Records, was shut down by RCA. And this actually affected a lot of artists, a lot of R&B artists like Jasmine Sullivan, Fantasia, Mario, Leona Lewis, you name it. That's a whole different video. But anyway, that wasn't the only thing that affected Alicia's career. Her affair with Swizz Beatz also had an effect on her career because it did somewhat taint her image. Alicia was put on a pedestal as an artist who really invoked female empowerment. She was articulate, she was classy, she was sophisticated, she sung about real things, and her musicality took priority over her image. You know, Alicia wasn't focused on being sexual the way that her peers were. You know, she was focused on her music and a lot of people appreciated her for it. However, once she got into this whole tangle with Swizz Beatz, it really did change the public perception of her because people saw a side that they didn't think that they would see. She was no longer just looked at as a Grammy Award winning singer and producer. She was now looked at as a home wrecker. And it's kind of unfortunate that she lost fans after that because, you know, I love Alicia Keys' music. I think she has a lot of classics under her belt. But when she got into a relationship with Swizz Beatz, it did turn a lot of people off from her music, unfortunately. So that really did affect her image, but, you know, Alicia Keys, she got over that hurdle and she worked things out with Meshonda and now both of them are good friends. They vacation together, they hang out, like they're home girls now. We love each other. I mean, we hang out with each other. We go to dinner together. We're doing Thanksgiving. We're doing the holidays. It is a beautiful partnership, you know, and that is really, really special. I'm very, very proud of that. It's a real thing and it's possible. It's beautiful. It's a sisterhood. We've put in so much work. I mean, we talk on the phone like every other day because we have to schedule. You know, we're talking about Kasim. And when we're not talking about Kasim, we're just talking about being women, you know, being mothers. There's a part in the book, it's the part where me and Alicia have our first moment together. And I asked God to speak through me and the first thing out of my mouth was, I don't want to talk about the past. All that matters is that one day we're going to share grandchildren. And it's like when you look at it like that, you have to let go of the negativity. This is a really nice story. I'm really proud of Mashanda and Alicia and Swiss Beats for coming together and just showing the world that this is possible. It's important for this world to see this type of maturity because at the end of the day, it's all about the kids. And in order for the kids to have a healthy environment growing up, their parents have to at least get along. Anyway, tell me what you all think about this down below. Please like, comment, and subscribe and share this video if you care. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time. Bye!