Scott, Jill

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JILL SCOTT

Born: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, c. 1972

Genre: R&B

Best-selling album since 1990: Who Is Jill Scott?: Words and Sounds, Vol. 1 (2000)

Hit songs since 1990: "Gettin' in the Way," "A Long Walk"

With an album that incorporates blues, jazz, modern R&B, poetry, and elements of hip-hop, Philadelphia street poet Jill Scott more than answered the question posed in the title of her 2000 debut, Who Is Jill Scott?: Words and Sounds, Vol. 1. The romantic, word-of-mouth album slowly caught fire and brought attention to the multitalented, honey-voiced vocalist, whose songwriting abilities had already earned her a Grammy Award before her debut hit the streets.

Born in Philadelphia in 1972, Jill Scott was an only child raised by her mother and grandmother. Subject to the abuse of her stepfather, Scott sought escape through writing, chronicling the vagaries of everyday life in her poetry, from the numbers in her school locker combination to run-ins with suspicious shopkeepers in her neighborhood. Scott was encouraged to keep writing her fly-on-the-wall observations by an eighth grade English teacher, who introduced her to the African-American poet Nikki Giovanni.

Scott majored in English at Temple University and continued writing her poetry and performing at the October Gallery coffee shop/art gallery, but soon found the drab confines of academia to be stifling to her creative drive and dropped out. Soon after, Scott formed a creative partnership with Philadelphia studio musician Scott Storch, with whom she wrote the song "You Got Me" for famed Philadelphia rap group the Roots. The song was featured on the Roots' 1999 album Things Fall Apart, with Scott's vocals replaced by singer Erykah Badu, who record label MCA thought would be a bigger, more commercial draw.

The song won a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance in 1999 and, even though Scott felt burned by being replaced by Badu, the singer pressed forward, joining the Canadian cast of the Broadway musical "Rent" and plotting her own album. The Grammy acclaim brought her work writing songs for and with such R&B and hip-hop stars as Eric Benet, Will Smith, and Common.

The Rise of Neo-Soul and a Breakthrough Debut

By the late 1990s, Philadelphia had become a hub for a new generation of musicians who had picked up the mantle of the famed Philly International R&B label of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which had briefly made Philadelphia the apex of the funk/soul universe. A loose conglomeration of musicians calling themselves the "Soulquarians" (a combination of soul and Aquarians) began to create a fusion of jazz, soul, R&B, and hip-hop dubbed "neo-soul" by the media.

Along with the Roots and Badu, a member of the extended Soulquarians family was Jeff "Jazzy Jeff" Townes, who had come to fame in the 1980s with his partner, movie star and rapper Will "Fresh Prince" Smith. When Townes asked Scott to turn some music he had into a song, the singer returned several days later with the breakthrough hit from her debut, the jazz pop poem, "A Long Walk," which described Scott's first date with her fiancé-to-be. Ironically, on songs such as the sensual, loungey jazz track "Do You Remember," Scott's voice is a dead ringer for Badu's soulful delivery.

Those songs took their place on Who Is Jill Scott?: Words and Sounds, Vol. 1 (2000), released in July by the California-based smooth jazz label Hidden Beach, founded by former Motown executive Steve McKeever. With middling promotion, the eighteen-track album began to gain a street buzz and was picked up for distribution several months later by major label Epic Records, selling half a million copies by October 2000.

Fans were wooed by Scott's combination of sassy spoken word ("Exclusively") and such languorous R&B/gospel kiss-offs as "Gettin' in the Way," in which Scott forcefully, and mellifluously, warns another woman to back off of her man or face the consequences. The album went on to sell more than 1 million copies and score three Grammy nominations. Scott was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" in 2001.

Scott feted Aretha Franklin at VH1's Divas Live in April 2001 and, ironically, picked up an Album of the Year Award at the Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards in August after organizers mistakenly announced the winner as Badu. The singer was the opening act for rock star Sting in the spring of 2001—leaving the tour briefly with a lung infection—and released the two-CD set Experience: Jill Scott 826+, in November. The release features a live album with meandering jazz poems such as the twelve-minute "Love Rain (Suite)" and expanded, be-bopping versions of songs from her debut that find Scott in fine, brassy voice. The second disc contains ten new, loose-limbed studio recordings that critics said sound more like funky sketches for future songs than finished compositions.

After a one-year hiatus during which she took singing and music lessons and penned articles for Oprah and Grace magazines, Scott plotted a return in 2003 with a double album that integrated influences ranging from Qawwali devotional singing to opera and classical string sections.

In an age of pencil-thin R&B divas singing vapid, sexually charged songs written by someone else, full-figured Jill Scott was a refreshingly natural talent who not only wrote her own material but was also unafraid to tackle serious, thoughtful topics in her sung/spoken song poems. Despite comparisons to everyone from jazz singer Betty Carter to contemporary Erykah Badu, Scott brought a new vision and perspective to modern R&B.