Reviewing the album in "NME", Sam Faulkner described the balance between contemporary music and retrospective as "an act of pure genius". "Q" magazine hailed it as "a prime candidate to head up the nu-soul revolution ... with a voice that challenges Mary J. Blige's". Steve Jones of "USA Today" said that "Keys already has a musical, artistic and thematic maturity that many more experienced artists never achieve". "The Washington Post"s Richard Harrington wrote favorably of Keys' musical influences on the album and expressed that she has "vocal maturity and writing instincts beyond her years". "PopMatters" critic Mark Anthony Neal praised Keys' performance on the album and called it "a distinct and oft-times brilliant debut from an artist who clearly has a fine sense of her creative talents". Robert Christgau, writing in "The Village Voice", said that the "grace and grit" of the first half warrant the "auspicious debut" label and that, after some "bores that threaten to sink the project midway through," Keys sustains the album with the songs at the end.