Alicia Keys on Voting for Obama, Her ‘Hunger Games’ Connection

Alicia Keys is getting out the vote for President Obama.

“Please spread the word to everybody you can … that we gotta make sure we’re voting for Obama and I feel so confident that he’s absolutely the right man to run this country,” the singer-songwriter tells The Hollywood Reporter, adding: “It’s more obvious that he’s the absolute right candidate.”

Keys, who recently campaigned for the Obama-Biden ticket at the “Women Vote 2012 Summit” in Philadelphia, thinks the incumbent nailed his final debate with Mitt Romney in Florida earlier this week.

“He’s always speaking very honestly, very truthfully, very candidly. I think sometimes people might want him to be more riled up or upset or something, but he’s always on. He’s always saying what needs to be said,” she gushes.

VIDEO: Alicia Keys on her ‘Girl on Fire’ Performance

Besides the election, Keys is also focused on the release this week of her brand-new animated app for children, The Journals of Mama Mae and LeeLee, on which she partnered with Bento Box Interactive. It features the relationship between a grandmother, based on Key’s Nana, and her granddaughter, based on Keys; LeeLee’s bedroom is the focus of app, where users can “sit” at her desk to journal and draw as well as play the virtual piano. On LeeLee’s bookshelf there’s a story, Blue Moon, with an original song by Keys, “Follow the Moon.”

“The amazing part of this is it’s completely inter-generational,” Keys says in an exclusive interview. “It’s about a daughter and her grandmother. It’s something that a mother and child can experience together, siblings can experience together, something that a grandmother and a grandchild can experience together. My mother and (2-year-old son) Egypt would definitely go through the story and play the games … and write in the journals and draw pictures.”

The Journals of Mama Mae and LeeLee (see screenshot below) arrives Thursday at the Apple App store for $3.99.

The 31-year-old Grammy winner/Obama supporter/entrepreneur/mom is also preparing to drop her fifth studio album, Girl on Fire, on Nov. 27. She’ll go on tour in support of the record in March.

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Last month, she performed the first single — also titled “Girl on Fire” — at the MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, featuring cameos from Nicki Minaj and Olympic gold-medalist Gabby Douglas.

Of course, as fans of The Hunger Games phenomenon know all too well, the name “Girl on Fire” is also a phrase used to describe heroine Katniss’ flame-emitting, “girl on fire” costume in the first installment of the book-to-film franchise.

“They approached me when the song was written,” she tells THR, referencing Hunger Games filmmakers. “They approached me about doing, like, the song … they were like, ‘Maybe this song could work with the movie,’ and literally, if it was a little bit of a different timing, I think it (would) have happened. Which would have been so crazy … if my album came out after the movie came out.”

“So it didn’t quite line up,” she adds, “but one had nothing to do with the other. I was on my own Girl on Fire trip and then they made the movie. I think they copied me!”

Twitter: @ErinLCarlson

Email: erin.carlson@thr.com