When the braided shorty burst out of the gate in 2001, boy bands were still boomin' and Destiny's Child defined bootyliciousness. With her classically trained voice and keyboard chops, Keys reintroduced the idea of a self-reliant (but still pop-friendly) R&B singer-songwriter – a type that stretches back to Stevie Wonder. In doing so, she crossed generational lines and ended up with an armload of Grammys. The outtakes, remixes and DVD with this reissue of her debut are nonessential, but the album has aged well – excepting a drum-machine beat or two, it feels timeless. "Fallin' " echoed Aretha's gospel-soaked Sixties ache, while the Top 10 follow-up, "A Woman's Worth," demanded R-E-S-P-E-C-T via slow and lush hooks. And the brash, bugged-out cover of Prince's B-side ballad "How Come You Don't Call Me" proves that, eight years before she sang about it with Jay-Z, Keys clearly had that Empire State of mind.

Listen to "Typewriter":

Related
• Random Notes, Rock's Hottest Photos

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"