Kanye West receives 10 Grammy nominations

LOS ANGELES -- The Grammys have gone autobiographical.

Kanye West raps about religion, his fears and his own greatness. Usher steamed up the charts with songs about sex, affairs and breakups. Alicia Keys sang about aching for love, confiding secrets and imagining a different future for herself.

Their reward for the tell-all music -- a collection of Grammy nominations Tuesday, 10 for West and eight each for Keys and Usher.

After last year's glossy pop, rap and rock led by OutKast's Grammy-winning "Hey Ya!," all three of these artists energized the charts this year by exposing deeply personal emotions, ideas, desires, flaws and insecurities.

"I think we all put a piece of ourselves, if not all of ourselves -- I know I put every single inch -- into my music, my songs, my production and everything. I think that's something that can be said for all three of us," Keys said.

Producer-turned-rapper West led all Grammy nominees and scored a bid for album of the year for his debut "The College Dropout," which stood out in the rap landscape because of its atypical prose. It avoided the usual plotlines about sex, money and violence and touched on everything from his faith to his fears of failure and other crises from his life.

The eight respective nominations for Usher and Keys, who collaborated on the hit "My Boo," included album of the year for Keys' "The Diary of Alicia Keys" and Usher's "Confessions."

Keys, whose 2001 debut album, "Songs In A Minor," won the R&B singer five Grammys, said this time through the awards process is even sweeter.

Ray Charles, whose posthumous duets album, "Genius Loves Company," became the biggest selling album of his long career, had seven nominations including album of the year and record of the year for "Here We Go Again," sung with Norah Jones.

Green Day garnered six bids for its hard-driving rock-punk album "American Idiot," which satirized culture, politics and apathy. The group was nominated for record of the year and best rock song for the title track and best rock album.

Other record of the year contenders were the mellow lament "Heaven" by Los Lonely Boys, the jumpy party song "Let's Get It Started" by the Black Eyed Peas and Usher's massive hit "Yeah!"

The Grammys will be given out Feb. 13 in Los Angeles during a broadcast on CBS.