Going into this year's Grammy Awards, India.Arie felt on top of the world.

Her debut album, Acoustic Soul, had earned her a stunning seven nominations -- more than U2 or Alicia Keys -- and her straight-talking lyrics about self-love and appreciating dark skin had made songs such as "Video" and "Brown Skin" popular anthems for millions of women and African-Americans.

But on Grammy night in February, Keys ended up being the darling, leaving with five awards while Arie won nothing. Instead of wallowing, Arie picked herself up, dusted off the bitterness and embarked on a journey of re-evaluation, introspection and heartfelt songwriting. The result was a September album, Voyage to India, that bears the firm stamp of Arie's triumph over her disappointment. Tonight, she comes to Morgan State University to kick off her national tour with opening act Floetry.

The Grammy disappointment "was on my heart," Arie, 27, says softly into the phone from her Atlanta home on a recent afternoon. "I was going over the whole year in my head and everything that had happened and realizing what mattered about that year and what didn't really matter about that year.

"Everybody kept saying, 'You're gonna get three or four or two,' " she adds. "I thought I was going to win something. When I didn't, I learned a lesson about all that. I'm not interested in competing with anyone. That's not me, it's not in my blood. I don't even play competitive sports."

And the realization inspired her to return to the reason she began making music and to pen songs like "Little Things," in which she sings: Running round in circles, lost my focus, lost sight of my goals/I do this for the love of music, not for the glitter and gold./Got everything that I prayed for, even a little more.

Arie says she never envisioned the success she's had when she first got into music. Growing up in Detroit and then Denver, where her father, Ralph Simpson, played for the Nuggets pro basketball team, Arie says she was often surrounded by music because her mother's family loved to sing. She adored Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack and Stevie Wonder, and later, while attending Savannah College of Art and Design, she began playing the guitar and writing music.

"I'm always writing songs," she says. "The inspiration is my life, which is the stuff I've been through, the things I've seen, the lessons I've learned. The more honest and the more emotive the song is, the more I like it. The more I feel it's successful."

And Arie found her first big success with a song that epitomized this honesty -- "Video," which saturated airwaves last year with the catchy refrain: I'm not the average girl from your video/And I ain't built like a supermodel/But I learned to love myself unconditionally, because I am a queen. With her lines about shaving her legs only if she pleases and loving every freckle on her face, Arie became a hero to the everyday woman and Oprah Winfrey, who told her: "Thank you for writing this song. ... We needed this song."

Arie says she was surprised "Video" struck such a chord.

"I was just writing about the things I've been through dealing with my physical self, my body image," she says. "I wrote about it because it's my story. I didn't sit down and say, 'I want to write a song that inspires women, that makes women think about their body image.' It's not like that. I just needed to talk about something that I'm trying to understand about myself.

"I thought I was the only one who felt that way," she adds. "I didn't know that everybody felt like that. For real."

For Voyage to India, which also is the title of the Stevie Wonder song that inspired her name, Arie says she focused on her ambitions in life instead of thinking about awards. (Still, record execs reportedly asked her to rush the album so she could release it before the Oct. 1 deadline to be eligible for this year's Grammys.)

In "Little Things," she talks about treasuring the important things in life: Give me my daddy, give me my mommy/Pour me some sweet tea, spoonful of honey/I don't need no Hollywood. And in "Healing," she sings, I release all disappointment/From my mental physical spiritual and emotional body ... That's why today I take life as it comes.

"I'm glad I learned," Arie says. "So I can move forward and be the kind of musician I want to be, making songs for the sake of music that I like, instead of making music because I think, 'This might get the most awards. This might get the most magazine covers.' I write the songs that I hear in my head.

"A Grammy would be kinda cool," she adds before hanging up, "but it's not my hope and wish and prayer."

India.Arie

Where: Murphy Fine Arts Center, Morgan State University

When: 8 tonight

Admission: $48

Call: 410-481-SEAT or go to www.ticketmaster.com