Alicia Keys Hints at New Album with Tweet

While not stating outright, Alicia Keys hinted at a new album on Twitter this weekend. Including a photo of her recording studio with her tweet, the singer wrote to fans: “The process.... Are u ready for the next installment? ;-)”

The new album would be Keys’ fifth and follow-up to 2009’s The Element of Freedom, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and sold 417,000 copies its first week.

Over the past two years, Keys had a child with producer Swizz Beatz and has been producing the music for upcoming Broadway play Stick Fly, which debuts on December 8. Keys spoke about producing music for Stick Fly in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal. She said about the process: “As an artist you always want to continue to grow and continue to learn. The more I take myself out of my comfort zone, the more that I learn, the better I become. That's without question true. And so it's exciting to learn about this new world.”

However, she clarified that Stick Fly is not a musical. She explained: “It's not a musical, so the music you will hear is transitional music. It's between scenes. It is instrumental. It really just helps to play into the emotion of the piece. And the piece is so incredible—it has you cracking up and you're yelling at the stage and emotional and you're crying and then you're laughing again. It's totally life. And so the music will assist—I hope—in that energy and the emotion that you'll get from seeing the show. I'm excited. I can't wait for people to see it.”

In addition to describing her experience producing music for the play, she spoke in slightly more detail about her upcoming album. She told the Wall Street Journal: “I'm in the studio all the time. It's just coming together so incredibly well. It'll definitely be out next year. And that's already coming at light speed. It won't be long at all. The music is so phenomenal. I'm loving it. I'm loving the zone of it. I really wanted to take the time to make it special because this is such an important time in my life.”