Eric Benet's voyage for India: singer-songwriter is balancing stardom and fatherhood

THE only thing that singer-songwriter Eric Benet loves more than making music is spending time with his 14-year-old daughter, India.

For him, she is like the air--essential for living. She is his inspiration, his muse, and the very reason that he sings, For his third album, Hurricane, the single father wrote a tribute song, "India," especially for his daughter.

"Whatever I've learned in the past few years and over my whole life, I want to pass on to her," he says. "We've been through so much together, and it's made us both stronger. As much as anything, this music is a gift, aim expression of my love for her and my respect for who she's becoming."

Benet and his daughter have been a dynamic duo since her birth. Her mother, his longtime girlfriend, was killed in an automobile accident when India was just an infant. Benet says he never thought about not rearing his daughter. "l understand the fear and the feeling of 'Whoa, how am I going to do this?" he says. "But then, how do you look in time eyes of somebody who is the flesh of your flesh and time blood of your blood and say, 'see ya?' I don't really understand that, and I'm just grateful that wasn't how I was raised, and that my daughter is in my life."

Raising a young girl alone is not--and was not--easy. He gives high praise to his mother, who helped him during India's early years. "During the first seven years of her life, it was a combination of me and my mother who helped raise India," he says. During the early years of his career, he was traveling, pursuing a record deal and performing on the road. In those early years, he lived in Milwaukee and India stayed with his mother when he was on the road. "Thank God for my mother; I'm blessed to have her and she means the world to me," he says. Benet's father passed away years ago, he says, when he was in his early 20s.

Today, Benet and India have settled in the Los Angeles area, where he plans to stay, he says, until she graduates from high school. "Los Angeles has become a place of necessity for me in nay career, and India has definitely acclimated herself to the L.A. way of life," he says, laughing. "I don't think she could deal with a full winter anymore, any more than I could." Now that he's in L.A., one of his sisters, who lives nearby, helps out when he's on the road.

There are plans for Benet to return to the road this summer and fall to perform on a domestic and international tour. "I'm grateful to everybody for opening their hearts to nay music," he says. The first single from his Hurricane album, "I Wanna Be Loved" (one of his signature sultry ballads), went to the top 5 on the R&B Adult music charts. A second single, "Pretty Baby," was recently released, and there are plans for a third release from this album that includes 13 original tracks. "These songs are about real life," he says. "They are snapshots taken at different stages of my journey over the past five years."

It has taken more than five years for the Milwaukee native to follow-up his breakthrough 1999 album, A Day in the Life, featuring the No. 1 smash "Spend My Life With You." What followed was a high-profile marriage and an even more high-profile breakup that tested and tempered him as both an individual and an artist. Although many of his fans believed he named the album after the catastrophic hurricanes that hit the gulf region last summer, the album's title and artwork were set in 2004. "I was just thinking that I have all of this stuff on my heart and I need to get it out so that I can move on to the next thing creatively," he says.

The entertainer was, however, involved with the hurricane relief efforts. He was one of the writers and performers on the song "Heart of America," co-written with Tim Blixseth, Edra Blixseth and Walter Afanaseiff. All proceeds from the song benefit Habitat for Humanity, the American Red Cross and Music Cares. It is estimated that the project will raise $100 million to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina. To date, $41 million has been raised. "When I look back on my life, that's going to be one of those things that I'm most proud of," he says.

So what's next for the proud father and talented artist? He says he's ready to start writing his next project, but for the present he's focusing on his daughter and his career. Right now, he says, he is not quite ready for a serious relationship. "I'm not seriously dating anybody right now," he says. "I do go on dates, but I'm just really, really concentrating on India, my career and me." When he's ready for a serious relationship, he says the type of woman who would interest him is one who is "loving and emotionally evolved--when I'm ready," he's quick to add.

Sensitive and soulful, Benet's lyrics to the song "Be Myself Again" probably sum him up best: