On Acoustic Soul’s anchor tune, “Video,” India.Arie joyfully sings, “I’m not the average girl from your video” over a head-nodding groove; it’s a line that perfectly encapsulates her ethos and establishes the singer/songwriter as a confident counterpoint to the stereotypes of commercial R&B. But that theme reverberates throughout her debut’s laidback delivery, jazzy harmonies, and arrangements that evoke Carole King and Stevie Wonder. As Acoustic Soul makes clear, Arie is many things—prodigiously talented, vocally gifted, optimistic—but she’s definitely not average.