India.Arie

India.Arie (b. 1975) is a U.S. soul, R&B, and neo-soul singer-songwriter, record producer, guitarist, and flautist. Born India Arie Simpson on 3rd October 1975 in Denver, Colorado, she tried various musical instruments at school there, but it was after moving to Georgia when her parents divorced that she took up the guitar. This led her into song writing, and from there into a professional career as a musician. She co-founded the Atlanta-based independent music collective GroovmentEarthseed (Groovement was the collective artists' name and Earthshare was their independent label name), and began to perform publicly. A Universal Records/Motown music scout spotted her and introduced her to Motown CEO Kedar Massenburg. The consequent album, Acoustic Soul (2001), involved a wide mixture of styles, and thus attracted a wide audience. It entered the Billboard albums chart at number ten, and at number three on the R&B album chart., eventually going double platinum. India.Arie also features on Stevie Wonder's 2005 album A Time to Love. She and Wonder duet on the title track "A Time to Love", which Arie wrote, and which was nominated in the 2006 forty-eighth Grammy Awards, for Best Pop Vocal Collaboration with Vocals. On the September 2005 premiere of The Tyra Banks Show, Arie performed "Just 4 2day", written especially for the show. She also wrote "What about the Child", a song that did not air but was made available as a $1 internet download to support child victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.