"If I Ain't Got You" is a song recorded, written, and produced by American singer Alicia Keys for her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys. Inspired by the 2001 death of fellow R&B singer Aaliyah, the terrorist September 11 attacks in New York City, and other different events in the world and in Keys' life at that time, it is about "how material things don't feed the soul." Musically, the slow bluesy piano ballad features musicians Hugh McCracken on guitar and Steve Jordan on drums. The single cover depicts Keys similarly to the subject of Man Ray's 1924 painting Le Violon d'Ingres.