Atlanta’s India Arie debuted 25 years ago. Her ‘acoustic soul’ finds new purpose
To talk to India Arie is to receive a giant download of her multifaceted personality. Bold. Pensive. Intentional.
Her opinions reside in multitudes, whether she’s critiquing the likes of Jack Harlow and Joe Rogan or talking about her own career.
“OK, so I have so many different things to say about this,” she said in response to multiple questions during a recent Zoom call with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
India Arie’s music is just as cavernous. For two decades, the Denver-born, Atlanta-based singer has made soul music that’s empowering and socially conscious, beginning with her 2001 seminal debut “Acoustic Soul.” Arie, along with ATL Collective (a nonprofit that helps recreate classic albums with local acts), will celebrate the album’s 25th anniversary with two shows at Center Stage on March 29 and April 3.
The album, released March 27, 2001, boasted songs like the seductive “Brown Skin” and the anthemic “Video.” It garnered seven Grammy nominations and won none, a defeat that’s followed Arie throughout her career but one she perceives differently now.
“Not winning those seven Grammys that first time has brought me more attention than if I had won one of those Grammys.”
More importantly, however, “Acoustic Soul” positioned India Arie as a leader in neo-soul (a term Arie said she didn’t love at the time but appreciates now, describing it as “live music, Blackness, sensuality”). And that journey was birthed in Atlanta. In the 1990s, she was part of Groovement, a collective of soul musicians that also included Avery Sunshine and Anthony David.
They’d regularly perform at Atlanta’s iconic Yin Yang Café, which was later renamed Apache.
“We created this world for ourselves, and that’s also a lot of the full development that you hear in ‘Acoustic Soul,’” the 50-year-old said.
When thinking on the album today, she immediately thinks of collaborator Blue Miller, her songwriting partner and best friend who died in 2018.
Arie also reflects on the “very strong belief in the power of music” that continues to guide her career even as she reexamines its future. The soul singer is recording new music and plans to drop an album (using words like “prayer,” “chant,” “meditation,” and “Negro spiritual” to describe it), but is pondering how it will be released. Last year, she dropped an EP, “Write of Passage,” on Even, a direct-to-fan music marketplace.
She doesn’t want to take the traditional label route: “I’ve outgrown that.”
“I did feel semi-retirement, like from 2020 to late 2025, where I felt like I could be done with this, but I don’t feel done. I feel that I’m pivoting, but I just never been in a pivot this big. So how would I know what it looked like? I’m still learning that. You build this big thing, and (now) it’s like my kids are out of college and living their life. What do I do?”
The AJC talked to Arie about her upcoming shows and revisiting the album that made her a soul legend.
This Q&A has been edited and condensed for clarity
Q: Tell me who you were at the time of your debut. When I hear “Acoustic Soul,” I hear so much confidence that is often hard to discover in your 20s.
A: I was a person coming out of a very strong Black community. When I came to Atlanta, it was having this renaissance, because there was LaFace and other labels doing Black music. But LaFace was the big label in Atlanta at the time, and then there was us (Groovement)— this alternative Black music voice. We were very Black. We loved our Blackness very much. There was like no outside voices saying, well, your nose is big, or she’s too dark. The confidence you hear is because I was completely convinced and taught that I was beautiful the way I was, that my Blackness was a privilege, and it was beautiful and that my womanhood was beautiful.
Q: What was Atlanta’s neo-soul scene at that time?
A: At the time, nobody was calling anything neo-soul. We were just it. We were what it was. Atlanta had its own scene of forward-thinking musicians who were also backward-thinking because our idols were Stevie (Wonder) and Marvin (Gaye) and Curtis (Mayfield) and Al Green. There’s a club that we all played at called Yin Yang cafe. And George Benson came one night, and we were like, wow. Like, it was crazy, because I don’t think he was one of the ones we talked about a lot, but those songs were songs that we all love, so we were forward-thinking because we had our own ideas and concepts about life that we were putting in the music. But we were also backward thinking because we love that sound and the singers and the way that they sang the vocals, the fact that the music was live.
Q: What does “Acoustic Soul” mean to you today, and does it take on different meanings with time?
A: I just think I chose to commit my whole life to being an artist. I don’t have children. I don’t want to say I didn’t want to. But when you choose something, you un-choose something else. I chose the life of an artist. I don’t regret one ounce of it. As I got into mylate thirties, I started thinking of my albums as children. I think of “Acoustic Soul” as my first child now making a name for herself. But also ( preparing for these shows) will be the first time that I really go back and listen to “Acoustic Soul” in totality, in a way that I’m actually listening for what it means because I don’t listen to my albums.
Q: Regarding your shows, what are you most excited about?
A: I’m excited just to experiment with what it feels like to sing “Acoustic Soul” front-to-back. I’ve never done that this whole time that it’s been alive. I’m excited to see how the songs feel, how the philosophies in the songs have aged for me personally, like, what do I still believe and what do I not believe? And, you know, just excited to be with the audience, because I don’t do it a lot. That was always my favorite thing about my career, was performing. But I just got exhausted, so I had to pull back (after the pandemic). ... Anytime I get ready to step back into my career, all the old feelings try to come back, and I have to remember I’m not the old person.
Q: What are some of those feelings?
A: Just the exhaustion. If you’re a person who likes to go to shows, you have no idea what people are dealing with when they come to your city. The show is about 90 minutes out of a 24-hour day, and a lot of that day you were on a bus getting to the show. Then, you got to get off and get dressed. It’s a lot.
Q: Being overlooked is a narrative that’s underlined your career. How do you feel about that? Kehlani recently gave you your flowers.
A: If you’re asking people, particularly in the Black community, who really know what I’m about, not just people who know that I sing “Brown Skin” and “Video,” but the people who know that I have many songs about the oneness of humanity, and songs about Black love and songs about self-love, I think that those people would call me underrated more than overlooked.
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
A: One of the things about music is it’s here after you’re gone, and you don’t know how people are going to regard you. I would like to be known for the overall message in my music — not my hit singles or what people are told to think about, because there are some people who think I bleach my skin. There’s still some people who think that I’m racist because I stood up to Joe Rogan. People who know me know that I have a love for humanity that comes through in my music. And if you listen to my full body of work, you understand (that’s) what I’m really about.
IF YOU GO
India Arie “Acoustic Soul 25″
6 p.m. March 29. Sold out; 8 p.m. April 3. $116-216. Center Stage. 1374 W. Peachtree St. NW, Atlanta. centerstage-atlanta.com.
About the Author
DeAsia is a music and culture reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She focuses on the intersection of arts, culture and diverse communities, as well as how emerging social trends are being expressed through the lens of the Atlanta aesthetic. DeAsia's work can be seen in Pitchfork, Essence, Teen Vogue, Elle and more.
