“If I Ain't Got You” by Alicia Keys

"If I Ain't Got You" is the song critics singled out as the high point of The Diary of Alicia Keys, her second album, from 2003, and she wrote and produced it herself. It's a torch song that waves off money and possessions as poor substitutes for love, its words shaped by the death of Aaliyah and a hard look at how short life is. Keys leads from the piano over Steve Jordan's drums, Fred Cash's bass and the Chops Horns, a soul ballad with jazz in its bones.

J Records made it the album's second single on February 17, 2004. It reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100, topped the R&B chart, won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the Grammys, and Diane Martel's video, with Method Man as a partner hustling illegally for material things, took the MTV Video Music Award for Best R&B Video.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.