Chuck D called hip-hop the black CNN. For India Arie Simpson, R&B is the black Huffington Post-a place for a famous lady to air a liberal's laundry list of gripes and dreams. On her fourth disc, she takes on global poverty, gangsta rap and (um, timing?) George W. Bush, over elegant, searching grooves that gussy up her understated "acoustic soul" with gospel, hip-hop, blues, Middle Eastern and West African accoutrement. Her plush, earthy voice drips empathy, but Arie's expressions of solidarity with the wretched of the Earth can be clumsy-she covers a Sade song about how the struggles of Somalis and Rwandans "hurt like brand-new shoes," and she thanks God for sculpting her from the same clay as "the most anonymous." She's on her smoldering game during the candlelit relationship ballads that comprise half of the album's love/politics division and even if she's not there yet as a poet of the dispossessed, she's overreaching in the right direction.

DOWNLOAD "Long Goodbye," "Chocolate High"