Jill Scott

She is an artist with an abiding, deep commitment to lyrical honesty and musical integrity. Simply put, if Jill Scott feels it, she writes and sings it. While vivid imagery, metaphor analogy are her stock in trade, there’s no pretense, no hiding. She’s upfront, in-your-face always real, using her own distinctive poetry to breathe life into words, digging inside to bring forth the accompanying emotion. It is that authenticity that has endeared Jill Scott to everyday music buyers who hear what she’s saying through her music and respond according. Folks who know the rough and tumble of life, love right, love wrong, passion misspent, passion fulfilled, lonely nights and empty days and everything in between declare, ‘Yeah, girl!,’ ‘Go ‘head on!’ and ‘I feel ya’. And in the tradition of the four albums that precede it, THE REAL THING is another cause for celebration for those who live for the real.

Commenting on her latest, much-awaited Hidden Beach CD – which features production work by Scott Storch (DMX, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Ja Rule), Jill’s musical director Adam Blackstone (The Roots), Carvin “Ransum” Haggins & Ivan “Orthodox” Barias (Musiq, Chris Brown, Mario) and JR Hutson among others – Jill says, “I thought the last album (2004’s Grammy-winning “Beautifully Human,” Words & Sounds, Vol. 2) was more peaceful, an affirmation… On the new record, I feel aggressive about what I want, need and desire and you can hear it in my vocal choices, in the tracks. I’d say in a way, it is a sequel to “Beautifully Human” but it’s grittier, sassier than the last one. I’m feeling gutsier, I’m feeling much more bold, free. In many ways, it’s closer to my first album. My original concept was to show different women – you know, like the housekeeper, the stripper, the congresswoman – but as I started writing and recording, I started taking on all these characters. I put myself in each woman’s place…and found that it became more about me, all of it, with the envy, the anger, the frustration, the loneliness, the joy, the passion and the rapture. And that’s what makes it juicy…”Juicy, indeed.