Jill Scott makes front page news on USA Today!
Posted in Buzz on August 31st, 2004
Jill Scott Makes the Front Page of USA Today!!!
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Jill Scott Makes the Front Page of USA Today!!!
On the eve of her new album, songstress Jill Scott reflects on the high cost of fame, the importance of her music, and the ways we can learn to love again.
Essence, August, 2004 by Joan Morgan
So I’m gonna give this to you in snippets. Collage what I know about Jill Scott and lay it out for you like Bearden would. Because Scott is very much like her music. When you think you’ve got it figured out, blink and look again. You’re bound to discover something new.
First there was the way she flipped it. Seriously old school. Limited marketing, video and radio airplay, word of mouth pushing it steadily along on the strength of skills, will and love. And completely on her own terms. No sapphic spit-swapping or boob-baring antics on national TV, no color-me-bohemian incense-lighting rituals woven into her stage show. Still, for the past four years, ever since her eponymous debut sold a couple million copies and set the standard for any newcomer looking to lay legitimate claim to the legacy of soul, people have been asking, “Where is Jill Scott?”
Of course, it’s not as if Scott, 32, were sitting around twiddling her thumbs. She made forays into the small screen with appearances on the UPN sitcom Girlfriends and a role in the Showtime movie Cavedwellers, costarring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. She wrote a book of poetry that will be published by St. Martin’s Press later this year, and with about 80 G’s of her own cash, launched the Blues Babe Foundation, named for her grandmother. The foundation, based in Philly, assists 16-to-21-year-old students of color from disadvantaged backgrounds with the financial and mentoring support necessary to ensure undergraduate success. On a more personal tip, she married her longtime love, 33-year old Lyzel Williams, bought a house, got a cat, and enjoyed some well-deserved marital bliss.
JOAN: Are you nervous or concerned about the length of time between the new album, Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds Vol. II, and your last CD?
JILL: A little. Because t know how the industry goes. Your label can start to take you a little less seriously or slack off in necessary areas like marketing. As far as record sales, I feel as if I can always do something else. If it doesn’t sell many records, then I can definitely still tour. But I think it’s important music. When I listen to it, I’m impressed and flattered.
If Scott sounds a little cavalier, it may very well be because she is far less concerned about the industry than she is about pleasing you and herself. “It’s unfair,” she tells me later. “I think positive music is music with a point of view, with a conscience–meaning yes, this is dark, this is funky, but I was here, and this is how I felt.” Not that she’s moved by music that’s only about “money, sex, diamonds or jewelry, music that doesn’t really touch anybody.” “Quite frankly,” and yes, Scott is frank, “I think it’s a waste of time.”
Then there’s the media’s usual confusion about what to do with a beautiful, talented Black woman who isn’t a size two. You know, opt for the head shot or stick her in a dashiki and color her “earth mother.” “I’m a Black woman,” she says. “I have natural hair. I’m intelligent. I like holistic foods and things that are good for my body. That automatically makes you an earth mother. You know, high priestess. It’s not true.”
JOAN: Have you noticed that the media also make you asexual?
JILL: Well, that’s not true either. [The laugh here is wicked.] When you’re a woman of size, photographers and the media seem to think that you don’t have any sex appeal. You’re lovely, but you’re not sexy. You’re sweet, but you’re not beautiful. Ridiculous. Mo’Nique is one of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen. Latifah? Beautiful. Oprah? Beautiful.
JOAN: And Jill, do you think she’s beautiful?
JILL: Yes, I certainly do.
It’s a truism that when it comes to contemporary pop culture, industry years are like dog years multiplied. It’s been four years since Scott’s debut and two years since her live album, Experience: Jill Scott 826+. Now with her highly anticipated new CD, due in stores August 31, the industry that received her so openly has become increasingly intolerant and parsimonious, ruthlessly ridding itself of once untouchable megasellers–Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston–for perceived underperformance. And in a business that favors hit-makers over artists, the only acceptable answer to the question “Where is Jill Scott?” is one that satisfies the dollar-driven bottom line. Nonindustry translation: This new joint better be so banging that nobody cares where she’s been.
As far as her artistry goes, there’s simply nothing to worry about. Beautifully Human really is that banging. Even so, her confidence can easily be undermined by her cravings for artistic perfection. “I can easily work myself into a frenzy,” she confesses, “worrying about whether or not you’re going to like it. I’ll listen to it once and love it. Days later I’m crying because I don’t like it. So I try my best not to worry at all.”
Forgoing the hit producers (The Neptunes, Kanye West) used ad nauseam by current chart-toppers, Scott wisely opted to work closely with the same Philly-based guys who produced her first CD (James Poyser, Andre Harris, Vidal Davis, Mama’s Boys) and a few kindred spirits such as Raphael Saadiq. “I tend to work with like minds,” she explains over dessert at Buddakan, an ultrachic eatery in Philadelphia. Her flawless caramel skin and meticulously painted chocolate lips provide a warm contrast to the white contemporary decor. This is definitely an I’m-feeling-myself day. Scott rocks apple-green pants, a complementary vintage shirt and platforms a good four inches high. “I don’t want to work with somebody just because they make hot tracks,” she continues. “I really want to like you, spend my time with you. Have a meal. Laugh. Because we may end up crying at some point, and I don’t want to be in that by myself.”
The result is not only lush but confidently Scott. Showcasing her talents both as a poet and an actress, Scott emerges again as the thinking Black woman’s everywoman, tackling topics as diverse as do-me feminism, infidelity and the betrayal of the political system with a vocal dexterity guaranteed to get you off your ass, and induce a few goose bumps.
Still, it’s a scary time. Scott’s kinda Black woman–full-bodied, real, big voice, big mind–is virtually absent from the American pop-culture landscape, at least in any chart-topping kind of way. And as much as we may love Jill and her sistren Angie Stone and Erykah Badu, none of them has had the chart busting success of a Beyonce. Their invisibility says a great deal about America’s refusal to see darker-hued Black women as objects of worship and desire.
Ask Scott about this and her response is eloquent in its simplicity. “Black women,” she shakes her head sadly. “We are so out of style. I’m a firm believer in love. It doesn’t really matter to me who you love, as long as you are loving. The problem is, it doesn’t seem like anybody’s loving sisters anymore. What happened? It makes me so sad and frustrated. Black women are not necessarily easy. I get it. We’ve been holding it together for so long that it’s hard for us to step back and allow our men to be men. They don’t take the trash out that first time and we’re looking at them like, This nigger, I knew it. But a Black family is so worthwhile. Just a little bit of hard work, a little listening, if we could just do that work.”
JILL: What’s the biggest misconception people have about me? That I’m this really, really nice girl. I’m all right, but I have my moments. I’m not Mother Teresa. Sometimes I don’t even like me.
JOAN: But, Jill, you are nice.
JILL: Yes, but I believe in having consideration for others. When that doesn’t happen, when I feel as if my toes are being stepped on, I have a real problem.
There’s a brother in California who can attest to this. She meets him in Santa Monica early one evening right before the sun decides to paint the sky over the Pacific purplish shades of pink and orange, and LaLa Land is temporarily redeemed from its host of sins. He is fine, beautiful really. And too conflicted over his very light skin and bluish-green eyes to believe it. Yo, my Nubian queen. Yo, ain’t you? Yo wassup, nigga!!! All up in her face as if she isn’t a woman. Like her name is Luda or 50. And when she shakes her head in disbelief and tries to just move on, he gets louder. What? Just cuz I said nigga? Yo, I ain’t White. I know I’m light and s—, but I ain’t White. That’s what’s wrong with us. We act like we too good to be called niggas. Yo. And now he’s poking her. Why you don’t listen to my CD? Let a nigga know how to get put on. And his boys have now formed a semicircle around her, singing “The Way” in some sordid serenade. And dude is so crazy with ego and pain, it’s clear the situation is dangerous. He touches her again, and Scott explodes–and she is straight North Philly about it. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me. There is nothing here for you. Be gone.” And he stops touching her. But not before releasing a string of invectives so vile it stops traffic. What, bitch? You think you somebody cuz you got money? “You think this is about money?” she asks, reaching into her pocket. Two seconds later she throws a handful of coins over her shoulder, showering him with change. We leave crazy beautiful boy cursing and scrambling to pick up every cent. What he does not know, and probably never will, is how bad she feels for him, how later in the studio she even prays for him and asks God to show him a way through his pain.
It stands to reason, then, that the most difficult part of celebrity for Scott has been the intrusions that come with fame. She doesn’t roll with an entourage or bodyguard. And she still stubbornly, or perhaps defiantly, goes to the same parks she did before she was famous. “I don’t think fame is cute. Before, if I was having a bad day, I could sit on a park bench, unwind and watch the dogs play. Today I go to the park, and I’ve got five minutes before somebody walks by, does a double take and says, ‘Hey, aren’t you?’ Then it becomes something other than me sitting in the park. That’s hard because I love people watching, dog watching and sky watching. Those are things that make me write.”
These days Scott lives in a New Jersey suburb, in relative anonymity, a whole “20 minutes and two worlds away” from the neighborhood she grew up in. Drive back there with her, and she’ll guide you through her memories. Of the park where she had her first kiss. The block near the BBQ joint where she dodged a bullet. Her grandmother Blue Babe’s soft indigo hands.
Walk with her a little, and you will quickly learn that the streets here literally intone her name. “I’m a little out of my element in other places,” she says happily. “There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s a lot of love for me here. There’s security in knowing that. I need that love like I need my mother’s love.”
Throngs of brown neighbors make their way from their windows and wait for her to hold court. The insistence is so loving you almost miss the entitlement. It’s the kind only those folks who’ve raised you can have. Scott indulges everyone.
“Heeeey, Jill!” shout young cats in new whips. “We love you, babeeee!!!”
“I love you too,” she screams back, and she is clearly delighted.
“Yeah,” she smiles. “This for me is home.”
Joan Morgan is the author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-hop Feminist Breaks It Down (Simon & Schuster).
COPYRIGHT 2004 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
