There’s nothing like taking on the big issues, and that’s exactly what India.Arie does on her powerful third album Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship. The title alone is an unmistakable signal that in the more than three years since her last Grammy winning album, Voyage to India appeared, India has grown even more ambitious.

That should hardly be a surprise. After all, her 2001 debut album, Acoustic Soul, which earned her seven Grammy nominations and sold more than two million copies, announced that an artist who is unafraid to speak her mind had entered the music scene. India continues to make good on that promise. Testimony… explores relationships with the honesty, depth and vulnerability that she has made her hallmark. Floating on hypnotic rhythms and delicate melodies, the album travels a journey from heartbreak to acceptance to transcendence, and communicates all the personal wisdom gathered along the way. The title of the album’s centerpiece sums it up: This is “India’Song,” the latest chapter of what she intends to be her “great, big body of work.” “I couldn’t help but write about all the lessons I was learning about what relationships are,” India says about the album’s genesis. She had come through a painful breakup and realized that survival was merely the first step on her path of independence. “I wanted to make sure that I was telling my truth, that I could stand behind it,” she continues. “I saw Free from 106 and Park, and I told her about the album when I was almost done with it. She said, ‘People don’t need you to say something that’s happy. They look at you and say, ‘What’s India going to tell us next about where she’s at?’ That was soothing.”

These songs, then, are smoky, soulful bulletins from the front, new sources of inspiration for India’s millions of fans. The first half of Testimony… finds India mapping an internal landscape of loss. “It’s crazy how much I miss/A simple good morning kiss,” she sings quietly on “Good Mourning,” and the unaffected directness of that lyric eloquently conveys the hurt in her heart. A bold, beautiful cover of Don Henley’s “The Heart of the Matter” establishes what might ultimately be Testimony’s… most profound theme: forgiveness. “If you keep carrying that anger/It’ll eat you up inside,” she sings. It’s a gripping performance, and she means it. “That’s exactly how I felt,” India says of her vocal on the song. “Your voice is wherever you are, and the voice you hear on that track is telling a story along with the lyrics. I was right there.” On the lovely “Wings of Forgiveness,” India defines that essential theme in her own generous terms: “You’re only human/Let’s break free of this gravity of judgment/And fly high on the wings of forgiveness.” Akon joins India on “I Am Not My Hair,” a song that returns her to the issue that first brought her national attention with the hit “Video”: those women should not be defined by their looks. “As a Black American woman, a lot of your integrity is dictated by how you wear your hair,” she explains. “The concept for the song was sparked when I decided to cut my locks, and all the different attitudes people had about it. This is my hair – and it’s my life. I’ll choose how I express myself.” That desire to live free of expectations also sits at the heart of “I Choose,” a song whose buoyant funk gets lifted by Bonnie Raitt’s guest turn on guitar. “When I see women like her, I’m inspired, because I see that you can be strong and feminine,” India says of Raitt. “That song is saying, ‘I choose what kind of woman I want to be,’ and she’s one of those women who chooses for herself.” In an even more striking collaboration, Gary Lenox of Rascal Flatts harmonizes with India on the wistful “Summer.” “I love country music,” she says. “If someone else were to sing some of my songs, they would be country songs, with their story lines and clever wordplay. Plus, I just love great singers, and Gary is a great singer.”