India Arie

When India Arie sings, "I'm not the average girl from your video," it has got to be the understatement of the year. Charismatic, emotional, and impossible to pigeonhole, her debut Acoustic Soul is more than a breath of fresh air: with it, she steps right into the artistic whirlwind of the new R&B.

India, 25, has already left deep impressions, with her richly textured voice and some of the most eloquent and inspiring songs we've heard on love and life since our first encounters with Roberta Flack, Tracy Chapman and Bill Withers.

"Songwriting has had an effect on me that I would never have predicted," India says. "In 'Back to the Middle,' the girl who was 'afraid to speak her mind,' is me. I was in a shell. When I tapped into my own sensitivity, I started to understand people better – singing, writing, playing, arranging, producing – I feel at first impressive and then truly inspired.

With equal parts of gorgeous melodicism and honest rootsy blues, India's voice was made to communicate directly to the heart. India writes and sings with such originality and intimacy that she immediately joins singular talents like Mary Chapin Carpenter and Lucinda Williams.

Acoustic Soul was over a year and a half in the making. Experimenting at both the demo and production stage, India emerged with a spare, yet enveloping sound of her own: a balanced, intuitive and highly personal melding of textures and beats chosen from both the old and new.

Both India's overflowing generosity of spirit and breadth of background are rooted in a supportive and musical family. Her mother, called Simpson by the family, and her father, basketball player Ralph Simpson, named India in tribute to Mahatma Gandhi because her due date matched his birthday. "Arie was something my mum made up, but I was told later that it means 'lion'". After picking up a recorder when she was too young to join the school band in her home town Denver, India eventually took up sax, baritone clarinet, "a little" French horn, soprano, a lot and tenor recorders, and trumpet as she was drawn by each instrument's unique qualities. All the while, she sang in the school choir.

Taking up the guitar while studying jewellery making at Savannah College of Art and Design transformed her life. "It was the first instrument I played that I could sing with. At a party, I was playing a song that I wrote about my mother, and at some point, I wasn't even thinking about what the next word or note was going to sound like. The room got really bright, like someone had turned up the lights. At that moment, I knew that a dream was coming true."

But India also set high standards for herself. "I always loved Stevie Wonder; when I was a kid, his music would touch me so much that I would have to take it off the record player for a little bit. Donny Hathaway had that effect on me too. I love James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Oleta Adams, Vince Gill and George Benson. Basically, I love singer-songwriters. That's what kept me from taking my music seriously at an earlier age. I didn't write songs; I just sang, and that wasn't enough for me. So when I started playing guitar, I jumped on it right away and I was out playing my first two songs within a month."

Soon, India co-founded an Atlanta artist's collective, Groovement/Earthseed, and their independently released compilation led directly to a call to play Lilith Fair stops in St Louis and Nashville, to crowds of 10,000. Not long afterward, Divine, a young vocal group with a No1. pop single, sought out not only India's songwriting, but her production, too. "It was beautiful to see a song I had written in my bedroom go to the next level for the first time."

Amid this activity, India says, "I was never searching for a deal. I knew that I wanted as many people as possible to hear my music, but I made a decision early not to compromise myself or my music." Her Nashville Lilith Fair appearance led her to two key people. "Meeting Reen Nalli (a talent scout for Universal Music Group), and trusting her, I knew she was going to help me do it right. Then I met Motown President, Kedar Massenburg, and he told me he'd never make me compromise my artistic integrity."

Like many of the young artists who've now remade R&B, India embraces hip-hop, but isn't subject to its stereotypes.