Doing It Her Way

India Arie, one of the young female stars rejuvenating R&B; music, believes one reason for her success is that she has tapped a nerve in women who don’t look like the buxom young supermodels inhabiting most music videos.

The reaction stems from her “Video,” a hit single that rejects impossible-to-attain standards of beauty perpetuated in videos, fashion magazines, television and movies.

When I look in the mirror

And the only one there is me

Every freckle on my face

Is where it’s supposed to be

And I know my creator

Didn’t make no mistakes on me

My feet, my thighs, my lips, my eyes

I’m loving what I see

“A lady came up to me in New Orleans and said that she and her granddaughter sing ‘Video’ every day,” the 25-year-old Denver-born, Atlanta-based musician said during an interview while here on tour with Sade. “She just started crying and saying, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done for her.’ She was like at church almost.”

Others are getting religion over Arie’s debut album, “Acoustic Soul,” a supremely self-assured first effort for which Arie not only wrote or co-wrote most of the songs but also put her stamp on virtually every aspect of the album as its co-producer.

The album, which has sold more than 650,000 copies since its release in April, places her in the ranks of a new generation of R&B; and soul-influenced singers, from Macy Gray and Jill Scott to Alicia Keys and Sunshine Anderson, who are taking control over their music early in their careers.

“It’s been happening since Erykah Badu came out, and we’ve seen a change where labels are looking for more artists like India and Alicia Keys,” says Violet Brown, director of urban music for the Wherehouse chain. “They’re seeing this is working and that these records are selling. What we see is some real talent, people who are writing their own songs, playing instruments and not just dancing to sampled tracks. These are artists who could be around for years to come and have great catalogs.”

How did Arie manage to get so much freedom her first time out in an industry that has been notoriously reluctant to give young artists full artistic control?

“I didn’t have to do anything,” she says, sincerely incredulous that any other scenario might have unfolded, despite abundant examples of young singers who are told what to sing, how to move, what to wear and even how to comb their hair by managers, agents and record companies. “Nobody can make you do anything you don’t want--you’re grown. Sometimes people accept things just because they think they have to.”

Arie is displaying the unshakable sense of self that is as integral to her music as her positive outlook. That outlook and her vigorous blend of classic soul with hip-hop led to an appearance with Scott, Keys and Yolanda Adams on a recent “The Oprah Winfrey Show” titled “Women Who Sing.” On the show, Winfrey told Arie, “We love that song .... Not only do we love that song, we love you for writing that song. We needed that song.”

Such is Arie’s self-confidence that she put her name into the chorus of “Video”: “No matter what I’m wearing I will always be/India Arie.” It comes across not as a display of ego, but as one woman’s bold expression of her security with who she is.

“I think I really got my boldness from my mom,” says Arie, as her mother, a fashion designer who goes by the name of Simpson, beams a smile from the other side of the Irvine hotel room during the interview.

“That’s where I got that personality where I’ll be like--’No, I don’t like that. What are you doing? No. NOOOO!” Arie shouts, taking pride in the way she leaves zero room for misinterpretation.

She concedes she took a different route sonically on “Acoustic Soul” from the one she’d envisioned, one that accented her acoustic guitar-driven songs with loping hip-hop rhythms.

“I always thought I’d make a more mature album, production-wise, and when I say ‘mature’ I mean for older tastes--like an Oleta Adams album,” she says. “But during the process of recording the album ... I realized, ‘OK, let me try to fit into the musical landscape. ...’ I knew I wanted to be able to dance to my own music, and have people my age like what I’m doing.”

Fans like what she’s doing and the positive tone she’s doing it with. “Instead of saying, ‘You lied to me,’ I can just say [in the song “Promises”]: A promise is a promise. It’s the same emotion I’m writing from,” she says, “but the take on it can be whatever I want it to be.

“I can foresee people saying, ‘Oh, she’s just a Pollyanna.’ But it’s not something I try to do, it’s not like ‘I can’t say that, let me make it lighter, let me make it sound like I’m an angel.’ That’s just the way I write. It’s the way God wanted me to do it.”

Unlike many R&B; and soul singers, Arie didn’t learn her craft in church. She was born India Arie Simpson--her father, basketball player Ralph Simpson, was then with the Denver Nuggets--but says her church vocalizing was limited because “I was too shy.”

It wasn’t until several years later, when she picked up a guitar in college, that she found her musical calling. She had by then moved to Atlanta with her mother after her parents’ breakup.

“When I started writing songs and I had something that I wanted to say, and I wrote the songs for my voice in my words ... that’s when I got really bold about it,” says Arie, who was studying jewelry-making at the Savannah College of Art & Design at the time.

It took a couple of years more for her to overcome that shyness. Even now, she doesn’t feel she’s mastered all the nobler qualities she espouses, yet she’s grateful to have a chance to add her voice and perspective to contemporary R&B.;

“I think there’s just been one point of view represented,” she says. “That doesn’t make any sense because everybody is different, but music hasn’t reflected it. Alanis Morissette did it, but there were no black artists really [saying anything different]. It was just ‘Party!”’

Obviously, Arie says, there’s more to glean from life than lessons in how to have a good time. And the chorus of approval from fans has reinforced her hopes.

“It makes me know that all the ideals that I had about what music can do and how it should be--that it can heal people and it can change people’s lives--are true,” she says. “I always felt that I was being too idealistic, but now I see it firsthand and nobody can tell me it’s not true because I see it all the time.”