Grammy-winning Alicia Keys grants a candid and surprising interview to Blender magazine this month, revealing her near breakdown and an unexpected conspiracy theory.

Alicia Keys is known and adored for her soulful songs and her peaceful demeanor but there is another side that she reveals to Blender magazine’s May issue in an interview: a political one.

The 27-year-old singer-songwriter tells Blender she has read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck “to symbolize strength, power and killing ‘em dead.”

Keys also reveals that she wishes to write more political songs, arguing that if black leaders such as the late Black Panther Huey Newton “had the outlets our musicians have today, it’d be global.”

“I have to figure out a way to do it myself,” she says.

Blender magazine quotes her mother as saying, upon hearing of the AK-47 pendant, “She wears what? That doesn't sound like Alicia.”

The singer also talks about the bicoastal feud between slain rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., which she says was fueled “by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing.”

Keys concludes, “‘Gangsta rap’ was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. ‘Gangsta rap’ didn’t exist.”

The artist, whose latest studio effort, “As I Am,” has sold over three million copies, also confesses that not long ago, the strains of surviving in the music industry were beginning to show and that she found it best to take a break from it all and travel the world by herself, in order to clear her head.

Keys has not limited her artistic pursuits to music. Last year, she made her feature film debut in “Smokin’ Aces” and also appeared alongside Scarlett Johansson in “The Nanny Diaries.”

She next appears in “The Secret Life of Bees,” a film adaptation of the novel of the same name, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. The cast includes Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson and Queen Latifah.