India.Arie and Stevie Wonder duet on the title track “A Time To Love” that India wrote, which was nominated in the 2006 forty-eighth Grammy Awards, for Best Pop Vocal Collaboration with Vocals. India.Arie also features on Stevie Wonder’s album A Time To Love which was released on October 18, 2005. Within months, without the concentrated radio play that typically powers pop and rap albums, Acoustic Soul was certified double-platinum. Billboard 200 albums chart and number three on the R&B album chart. The album, released in 2001, debuted at number ten on the U.S. Sidestepping all the devices of flavor-of-the-month record-making, Acoustic Soul acquainted listeners with a brave and eloquent new voice, drawing an uncommonly broad swath of listeners from hip-hop, the so called neo-soul, blues, folk, and classic troubadour-style singer/songwriting, all at once. Their Universal Records/Motown music scout spotted her and made an introduction to Motown CEO Kedar Massenburg. It was a direct result of writing songs,” she said at the press release of her debut album, Acoustic Soul.Ĭo-founding the Atlanta-based independent music collective GroovmentEarthseed (Groovement was the collective artists’ name and Earthshare was their independent label name), her one-song turn on a locally released compilation led to a second-stage gig at the Lilith Fair. “When I started tapping into my own sensitivity, I started to understand people better.

She had taken up a succession of musical instruments throughout her schooling in Denver, Colorado, but her interest in the guitar while attending the Savannah College of Art and Design led to a personal revelation about songwriting and performing. She absorbed musical skill early in life, encouraged by both parents: her mother, Joyce, herself a former singer, and now India Arie’s stylist and her father, former ABA and NBA basketball player Ralph Simpson (not former NBA star player Ralph Sampson, as has been mistakenly reported in some media). India.Arie, born India Arie Simpson on October 3, 1975, in Denver, Colorado.

India arie songs playlist