“My favorite definition of the word ‘worthy’ is deserving of regard and respect,” she says. Her eighth studio album, WORTHY soars as India’s most textured and sensual work to date an intuitive, multi-layered effort from a mature artist not only in command of her gifts, but wise enough to shed all ‘unworthy’ distractions or, as she sings on the scalding “Coulda Shoulda Woulda”, - ‘no time to get to my haters…not wasting my bars on you …’ Faithfully repurposed as the title and theme of her brand new 16-track album, including 13 songs and 3 interludes, India’s first full-length offering in five years is set to impact a world finally attuned to the kind of empathic sea-change the humanitarian singer/songwriter has embraced her entire career.Ĭonsider it a mission accomplished. And in conversation, she rhapsodizes about James Taylor.It’s no secret to India.Arie fans that the word ‘worthy’ has been an empowering expression of self-love for her and her audience over the years.
Her album name-checks her heroes, from Bessie Smith to Stevie Wonder, even Karen Carpenter. Unlike so many young artists, who are works in progress, Arie has a strong sense of who she is and where she came from. Arie took it in stride, pleased that the sound she heard in her head had found an audience. Tastemakers such as Elton John and Oprah Winfrey gushed over her.
When she insists, "My sexual desire ain't controlling me" on "Part of My Life" and calls for temperance and self-control in "Back to the Middle," she steers a course mapped out by adult artists such as Withers, Terry Callier and Tracy Chapman. Though the album could stand to prune a couple of tracks, and it sinks a little too comfortably into a mid-tempo pace, it is mature beyond the singer's years. That's never more apparent than on the incense-and-candles ballad "Brown Skin," which is salted with Hammond organ, and "Nature," with a heart-beat groove grounding its New Age wind chimes. "It added that sexual element, because the bass corresponds to that below-the-waist feel that was lacking in my music." "Adding the bass to `Video' made a difference," she said. She drew inspiration from hip-hop acts such as Dead Prez, which melded acoustic instruments with drum machines.
But when she came to Motown, she faced a challenge: How to preserve the integrity of the songs yet still find a way to compete on the radio with the teen-pop acts and more heavily produced R&B hitmakers like Destiny's Child? Her sound was stripped down and disarmingly direct. While developing her artistic persona in Atlanta, Arie formed an artists collective and was invited to perform on a pair of Lilith Fair dates in 1999. So when I started playing coffeehouses and people would ask me what my sound was, I'd say `acoustic soul.' When I came to Motown, I told I wanted to call the album that on the first day we met." "I realized that I had always fantasized about mating these two sounds, the soul voice and the acoustic guitar, like Bill Withers had done.
"Within three weeks, I had written three songs," she said. She didn't pick up a guitar until she was 20 and was attending Savannah College of Art and Design. At age 12, she and her mother and brother moved to Atlanta, where Arie studied saxophone, clarinet, French horn, recorder and trumpet.
Her father, Ralph Simpson, was a pro basketball star her mother, who simply calls herself Simpson, is a singer and designer. "In my mind, the difference has to do with the subject matter of the songs, because the subject matter dictates what words you're going to be singing, and how you're going to present yourself as a singer."Īrie grew up in Denver.