Alicia Keys has heard it all when it comes to male catcalling.

It's what once led the 34-year-old superstar R&B performer to dress in a less feminine way than she might have to deflect all the unwanted attention. Keys now reflects there was a price to pay, like being labeled gay when she really wasn't and was just trying to stay focused on chasing her dreams.

"I definitely started hiding when I got old enough to walk down my NY streets alone," the native New Yorker wrote in a recent blog post titled "A Revelation." "I started to notice a drastic difference in how men would relate to me if I had on jeans, or if I had on a skirt, or if my hair was done pretty."

Keys insists she could feel the "animal instinct" and didn't like what she was sensing.

"I didn't want to be talked to in that way, looked at in that way, whistled after, followed," she said. "And so I started hiding. I chose the baggy jeans and Timbs, I chose the ponytail and hat, I chose no makeup, no bright color lipstick or pretty dresses. I chose to hide."

Then, when her 2001 debut album, "Songs in A Minor," was released, Keys again found herself swamped with attention largely of an unwanted variety stemming from her tomboy image. She remembers having the "baggy/braided/tough NY tomboy thing mastered" and pretty much feeling good about it.

"Then because of the way I spoke or carried myself, people started calling me gay and hard and I wasn't gay, but I was hard and although I felt comfortable there, it made me uncomfortable that people were judging me and so slowly I hid that side of myself," she wrote.

As time went on and more of her life unfolded, Keys recalls arriving at a stage where she chose to stop hiding altogether.

"You are allowed to be smart," she shared. "You are allowed to be tough. You are allowed to be sexy ... You are allowed to be yourself!!"