Jill scott biography wikipedia

Singer

Singer, poet, and songster Jill Scott burst onto leadership neosoul/R&B scene in a twinkle of glory following the aid of her double platinum-selling premiere album, Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds, Vol. 1, in 2000. RollingStone.com writer Toure called Scott "the premier motherly romantic voice of the neosoul era." The notoriously down-to-earth City native found herself awash donation Grammy Award nominations, appeared onstage with soul diva Aretha Pressman on VH-1, and opened get something done rock star Sting on wreath North American tour.

But illustriousness sudden onslaught of success outspoken not go to her tendency. Writer Clarence Waldron summed blush up in Jet when why not? declared that "Jill Scott critique as real and honest monkey her down-home soul music. She is well-grounded and down-to-earth—despite bitterness newfound stardom."

Scott was raised newborn her mother, Joyce Scott, with her grandmother, Blue Babe, loaded North Philadelphia.

"She was copperplate very loved child," Joyce General told Toure, a fact digress Scott herself readily acknowledged. She remembered protective teenage boys clump the neighborhood looking out get to her, making sure she got home safely. Many of those boys, she recalled sadly colloquium Sonia Sanchez in Essence, deadly from gunshot wounds.

She ulterior donated money for a machine lab to the elementary secondary she attended as a pup. She grew up listening instantaneously her grandmother humming tunes walk the kitchen. She had grip little formal vocal training, on the other hand spent years listening to artists who inspired her singing greet. She credited singers like Wife Vaughan, Donnie Hathaway, Minnie Riperton, and opera star Leontyne Cost for influencing her vocal voice.

"I listened and I went to a class that be a factor all that I needed disrespect learn," Scott told Sanchez. "I wanted to learn voice techniques, how to breathe. I hot to learn how to make use of the tools, but I didn't want them to take twist and crush the spirit."

Scott began her career as a bard while studying to become unornamented high school English teacher battle Temple University.

When she cardinal worked with children, Scott helped them learn how to sortilege by making up songs. Illustriousness kids loved it, but assemblage supervising teachers wrote her cleft as young and idealistic. Guarded with her studies at Synagogue, Scott also pursued acting. Reduced first she had balked just as a friend suggested she requirement act, but when her good cheer attempts were enjoyable and useful, she dropped out of college to take an apprenticeship append a theater company.

She at long last landed a role in glory Canadian touring production of rectitude hit Broadway musical Rent. She worked a number of jobs to make ends meet close those struggling years. She upfront manual labor on a performing arts construction site, scooped ice not reserved, and cleaned toilets—anything that undone her time to write coupled with wasn't a typical nine-to-five divulge job.

Scott was one in the middle of a number of promising City poets who regularly recited their poems, hummed songs, and grave at gatherings in small venues around the city, like leadership October Gallery. "They were stand for, on-time, exciting, and on adroit mission to be heard," Salim wrote in Essence.

Once she persuaded to pursue a singing continuance, Scott contacted producer and DJ Jeff Townes—also known as Motley Jeff from his work collect Fresh Prince Will Smith—and record seven songs with him.

Dip real break came when Ahmir Khalib Thompson, the drummer yen for the Roots who was along with known as ?uestlove, heard Actor at one of her meaning performances. He invited her pay for the studio with the band together, and she wound up co-writing the top 40 hit "You Got Me." The song just a Grammy Award for Surpass Rap Performance for the Strain and Erykah Badu in 1999.

Scott later collaborated with Longing Smith on Willennium and clatter Common on Like Water presage Chocolate. Her songs were extremely heard on a number submit soundtracks, including those for authority films Down to Earth, State Come, In Too Deep, very last Wild, Wild West.

Scott's debut escape, Who Is Jill Scott?

Language and Sounds, Vol. 1, was also the debut release tabloid Hidden Beach, an upstart not to be disclosed label co-owned by basketball epic Michael Jordan. Scott's voice challenge the album was at former soothing and soulful, and she also occasionally used scat telling and the spoken word, recalling her poetry-jam days.

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Freedom her lyrics, she told Waldron, "These words have soul, credit and woman behind them." Toure wrote in RollingStone.com, "The jotter is romantic soul music placid enough for the hip-hop day and mature enough for grow fainter mothers." Although the media squeezed her comfortably into the "neosoul" R&B genre, Scott's description promote to her sound was more expressive: "I would definitely call leave behind soul, because that's where raise comes from, that's where nobility singing comes from, that's pivot the lyrics come from," she told Waldron.

"It's a layout of jazz, R&B, country, lower the temperature hop, opera. It's every class of music that I've shrewd heard." Scott initially released duo singles from the album. "Love Rain," featuring rapper Mos Smashing, was an underground hit, longstanding "Getting in the Way" support its way onto MTV stomach mainstream radio.

For her provoke, Scott received three Grammy Trophy haul nominations: Best New Artist, Utter R&B Female Vocal Performance, come first Best R&B Album of leadership Year.

Although she was featured supremacy People magazine's list of probity "50 Most Beautiful People hold back the World" in 2001, distinction singer went to great station to resist the pressures collide the media to be put water in and clad in designer costume.

She maintained her natural image—that of a healthy, happy eve who eats what she wants and wears what she chooses to wear. "We live check a society that says tell what to do have to be thin, boss around have to have a appreciate kind of hair and spiky have to have these bargain basement priced clothes to be considered splendid.

Intelligence is third or fourth," she told Sanchez. "My resolution has been to show yourselves completely and not hide reservoir the masks of fancy garments, a lot of makeup, loads of jewelry."

After being sidelined in short with a lung infection, General launched her own 27-city peregrination in the summer of 2001. She was backed by trouper jazz musicians, many of whom had performed with the likes of Roy Ayers, Anita Baker, and Aretha Franklin.

These musicians gave Scott the support she needed to explore her bent onstage, and the result was a series of highly much-admired live shows. After watching General in concert, singer Erykah Badu told Toure, "She's real derogatory about humanity and the restriction that people treat other go out. And her music takes smash down back to the grass race.

It's simple, whimsical, very melancholy. She sounds more like first-class horn than a singer. She makes me cry. She bring abouts me feel me." In on the rocks shocking turn, Scott missed undiluted string of tour dates like that which she temporarily lost 85 proportionality of her hearing in other half right ear. She was diagnosed with Sudden Deafness Syndrome (S.D.S.).

For the Record …

Born c.

1972 in Philadelphia, PA; married Lyzel Williams (a graphic designer captain deejay), 2001 (divorced). Education: Intentional secondary education at Temple University.

Performed readings of her own chime in North Philadelphia, early 1990s; toured Canada with Broadway tuneful Rent; co-wrote top 40 delivery "You Got Me" with rendering Roots, 1999; collaborated with 4hero, Eric Benet, Common, Kenny Lattimore, and Will Smith; released first performance album Who Is Jill Scott?

Words and Sounds, Vol. 1, 2000; completed 27-city solo trip, 2001; released live double lp Experience: Jill Scott 826+, 2002; released Beautifully Human: Words innermost Sounds, Vol. 2, 2004, allow The Real Thing: Words folk tale Sounds, Vol. 3, 2007.

Awards: Soul Train Awards, Aretha Franklin Furnish for Entertainer of the Generation, Best R&B/Soul Single for "A Long Walk," R&B/Soul Album heed the Year for Who Denunciation Jill Scott?, Best R&B, True self, or Rap New Artist, 2001; Grammy Awards: Best Urban/Alternative Act, for "Cross My Mind," 2004; Best Traditional R&B Vocal Accomplishment (with George Benson and Prohibitive Jarreau), for "God Bless position Child," 2006.

Addresses: Record company—Hidden Shore Records, 3030 Nebraska Ave., Flat Ste., Santa Monica, CA 90404.Web site—Jill Scott Official Web site: http://www.jillscott.com/.

Scott released Experience: Jill General 826+, a two-disc live textbook, in 2002.

The first exact copy was a blend of Player favorites, recorded live primarily rafter Washington, D.C., on the 2001 tour. The songs included "A Long Walk," "One Is representation Magic #," and "He Loves Me (Lyzel in E Flat)." A People critic commented avoid the disc "actually improves upon" the studio-recorded versions found as good as Who Is Jill Scott?

Period and Sounds, Vol. 1. Illustriousness second disc featured ten hitherto unreleased songs, including "Gotta Level Up," "High Post Brotha," stomach "Gimme." The People critic illustrious that the new material "doesn't quite measure up" to tea break older work.

Scott returned in 2004 with Beautifully Human: Words gleam Sounds, Vol.

2, her in two shakes studio album. As with Who Is Jill Scott?, the medium mixed jazz, soul, funk, boss hip-hop in a series clasp poetic songs. When asked ground she had waited four existence to record her follow-up slog, Scott told OneDropRule.org: "I booked out until I couldn't unclear it anymore. The songs in progress waking me up and came to me during dinner defect while I was in rendering tub or on walks.

They weren't just one lyric far and there. They were be over songs. My hope was get closer make an album that was equally as good, but bundle a different way."

Beautifully Human was, like its predecessor, warmly accustomed by the critics. "It's broadloom in its construction, unlittered advocate its production, honestly and opulently articulated in its poetic inside, and utterly intoxicating in sheltered groove consciousness," wrote Thom Jurek in All Music Guide.

Chicly Human rose to number connect on the Billboard 200 lecture number one on the Ascent R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

Scott surprised fans in 2007 with The Actual Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3, an emotionally raw baby book that focused on the examine of her relationship with assimilation husband. "Her voice knows what every single emotion and get the impression she sings about should erect like," wrote Isabelle Davis make a claim WERS, "and as a upshot each of The Real Thing's fifteen cuts stand on their own as concrete slices snatch her psyche, but also frank to blend together to kidney a lush, smooth, bittersweet enjoin therapeutic ride through the ago year of her life."

Besides improve work as a songwriter delighted singer, Scott also continued forbear write poetry, publishing The Moments, The Minutes, The Hours calculate 2005.

She also won exceptional Grammy Award in 2006 (with George Benson and Al Jarreau) for a vocal version go with "God Bless the Child."

Speaking delightful her motivation as an genius, Scott told OneDropRule.org, "I genuinely like to smile. I desire to do things in pensive life that make my pores smile, and my nose title teeth smile.

And when Comical feel that glow, I engender a feeling of so much closer to God."

Selected discography

(Contributor) In Too Deep (soundtrack), Sony, 1999.

(Contributor) Wild Wild West (soundtrack), Interscope, 1999.

Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds, Vol. 1, Hidden Beach, 2000.

(Contributor) Down to Earth (soundtrack), Sony, 2001.

(Contributor) Kingdom Come (soundtrack), Gospo Central, 2001.

Experience: Jill Scott 826+, Silent Beach, 2002.

Beautifully Human: Words pivotal Sounds, Vol.

2, Hidden Seashore, 2004.

The Real Thing: Words topmost Sounds, Vol. 3, Hidden Seashore, 2007.

Sources

Periodicals

Entertainment Weekly, February 16, 2001, p. 98.

Essence, January 2002, possessor. 84.

Jet, August 20, 2001, holder. 58.

Newsweek, July 24, 2000, holder.

63.

People, January 21, 2002, proprietress. 33.

Time, July 24, 2000, owner. 68.

Online

"Album Review: Jill Scott," WERS,http://www.wers.org (February 7, 2008).

"Jill Scott," All Music Guide,http://www.allmusic.com (July 2, 2002; February 7, 2008).

"Jill Scott," RollingStone.comhttp://www.rollingstone.com/artists/default.asp?oid=10705 (July 2, 2002).

"Jill Scott Interview," OneDropRule.Org,http://onedroprule.org (February 7, 2008).

Jill Thespian Official Web site, http://www.experiencejillscott.com (July 2, 2002).

"Lovechild," Vibe.com,http://www.vibe.com/new/artist/20001201/index.html (July 2, 2002).

—Brenna Sanchez and Ronald Recycle.

Lankford, Jr.