India.Arie - Happier in her soul

India.Arie has been in the game long enough to realise that some people just don't like her. The first time I interviewed her, in 2003, she'd been scandalously snubbed by the Grammys, in spite of seven nominations, for her ground-breaking debut Acoustic Soul. This was the album that re-affirmed that it was OK for women to not always shave their legs or look like Naomi Campbell. It sent shockwaves through the music industry and raised an army of female fans willing to throw their bras into the mix of her beauty revolution.

The Grammy committee rectified the mistake the following year by tossing a couple of gongs her way for her second album, Voyage to India. "I actually knew this day would come, when the critics and cynics would look at my music and say it's too positive," she said at the time, solemnly. "But I don't care enough to change what I do."

Three years later, I caught up with the singer in New York as her label bosses went all out to promote her third album, the earnest Testimony: Vol 1: Love & Relationships. This time, she'd hooked up with lascivious rapper/singer Akon for a remix of the single "I Am Not My Hair", a move that had internet forums (and said cynics) gossiping that she was branching into pop after years as one of the leading lights of the US neo-soul scene, alongside Erykah Badu and Jill Scott. Others were mad that she'd decided to wear braids in her hair. She was livid.

Today, we're at her record label's HQ to talk about the second part of her album series, Testimony: Vol 2: Love & Politics. Sufficient years have passed for Arie to have reached a happy place in her relationship with her naysayers. But it hasn't been easy. "It's been a difficult transition," she says. "People were saying, 'Well, if you do that, people might think it's too preachy, people might not play it on the radio.' There were a lot of people-might-nots. And it took me a long time to get out from under that."

In person, the striking 33-year-old is effortlessly smiley and well dressed, sporting the kind of short crop that could label her an ABW (angry black women) if she wasn't so delicately feminine. She's changed – or grown up, as she puts it – and the ex who served as the inspiration for her last album is long out of her system. "After that relationship, which taught me so much... the naivety was washed away.

"It's about continuing to grow. I'm not always polished and good. Really, I see myself as a model of self-determination because I just keep going."

Colorado-born Arie originally left home to study jewellery-making in Savanna, Georgia. When she decided to pursue music, she worked at developing a solid following down south before she caught the attention of a talent scout who signed her to Motown. She dropped her surname (Simpson) and ever since has been something of an industry darling, selling out shows internationally with her folky, acoustic style. Her music evokes both bluesy and hip-hop traditions, inspired by her idols Stevie Wonder and Sade, whose song "Pearls" she covers on her album.

Arie revels in the adoration of some very high-profile fans, including Oprah Winfrey, Nelson Mandela and, more recently, Michelle Obama. "She told me, 'Your music brings me a lot of comfort,'" she says, with a bright smile. "One of the things I love about Barack Obama being in office is Michelle, because she widens the parameters of what black women are. It's so important."

On her new album, Arie waxes lyrical on everything from relationships to Hurricane Katrina, and hooks up with a variety of world music practitioners such as the Jamaican roots artist Gramps Morgan, the Turkish singer Sezen Aksu and the Ivory Coast singer-songwriter Dobet Gnahoré. She hopes the album will broaden her reach as a black artist. "This album is me," she says simply. "I'm not trying to fit into anyone's characteristic checklist of what it means to be neo-soul. I hope some middle-aged white woman in Iowa can identify with my music, but I hope she can identify with me, period."

Recently, she's also branched out into acting, starring in the Atlanta-based indie flick Pastor Brown, where she played Sister Fatima – "a dignified woman". It was good practice for her upcoming starring role in the Broadway revival of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. The musical, which outlines the dilemmas of black women, is set to open in 2010. "Acting teaches you about yourself," she says. "But I'm curious about what it's going to be like on Broadway. I've never done anything like that before."

Arie's evolution has also seen her launch herself as a budding entrepreneur, with the boutique label Songbird to which she signed her buddy, Anthony David. The pair received a Grammy nomination this year for their duet "Words". "I want to have a lot of money, like everybody else," she says. "But I'm not gonna do what I have to do to get it. I didn't see myself that way before. I would say that business and art do not go together and I thought I wouldn't be able to write songs if I got too involved. But I found that it's actually the opposite because the more comfortable I am knowing that my life is in order, the more comfortable I am when I just want to block it out for a few days and go into writing mode."

She's not disenchanted with the music industry, as such, but believes that owning her own career will ensure that she's going in the right direction. "I still want to have albums that I put out internationally, but I want to have more control."

On these shores, she has yet to match the popularity she's established in the USA, but she remains optimistic. "I always want more and more people to know what I am... If they listen to it and they like it, then they like it. If they listen to it and they don't, then that's OK too. As long as they know I exist."

'Testimony: Vol 2: Love & Politics' is out now on Universal/Island