JILL SCOTT - To Whom This May Concern

Jill Scott – just like Bruno Mars, another artist very much in the spotlight these days – took a full ten years to make a new album under her own name, but the results prove far more flattering than those achieved by the little prince of Honolulu. Where Bruno Mars confirms his gifts as an impeccable imitator, unable to distinguish himself from his originals, Jill Scott – while drawing just as much on the greats of the past – stamps her songs with a personal, recognisable imprint. Listening to "To Whom This May Concern" it's certainly possible to spot clear common ground with the work of other major figures from the classic r&b circuit, first and foremost her friend Erykah Badu, to name the most obvious, but everything is reworked and stamped with her own trademark, resulting in a record built to last well beyond the fleeting success of short-term sales, renewing the status of an artist who, at the turn of the millennium, was hailed as one of the leading figures of the nu-soul movement.

Ten years, we said, though almost eleven have actually passed since "Woman", and today Jill Scott feels ready to release what could be recognised as her definitive work, a well-balanced tangle of styles through which the Philadelphia singer-songwriter (born in 1972, so no longer exactly young) moves with utter ease, alternating soul, hip-hop, pop, jazz, funk, polyrhythms and r&b. Scott started out as a spoken word artist, reading poetry in public, a kind of performance that in the second half of the nineties still implied a strong social commitment, an outspoken militancy. Even today Jill sets herself the goal of summing up decades of blackness, celebrating above all seventies soul and the hip-hop revolution. The first fifty-five seconds of "Dope Shit" are irresistible, the best possible opener, an introduction to the colourful explosion of sound delivered on "Be Green", a track enriched by horns and a feature from New Orleans bandleader Trombone Shorty.

The hip-hop side is explored alongside Ab-Soul on "Ode To Nikki" and with Tierra Whack on "Norf Side", where Scott gets a few things off her chest, rapping "They keep talking about my body on Instagram/ they say I'm a mean bitch/ that I'm in the Illuminati". "Pay U On Tuesday" is a slow, jazz-inflected swing with blues cadences, but it's the soul-oriented tracks that define the project, from the super-refined, super-sensual singles "Beautiful People" and "Pressha", through the brief "Me 4", the nocturnal "A Universe", the pulsing "To B Honest" (featuring JID), carried by a sumptuous bassline, and then "Don't Play", "Offdaback" and the memorable "Ase", right in line with the most unforgettable evergreens of the Motown house style.

Plenty of nu-soul, blackness, spirituality, silk sheets and female empowerment, but there's also room to recall the glitter and mirror balls of Studio 54, thanks to the proto-disco of "Right Here Right Now" and the formidable funk drive of "BPOTY" (short for "Biggest Pimp Of The Year", featuring Too $hort), another moment of pointed social commentary.

With all these intriguing courses on offer, "To Whom This May Concern" comes together as a new act of poetic resistance, through which Jill Scott doesn't just aim to sing for entertainment, but also to explain – to herself first of all – how it's possible to survive the storm and come out the other side intact. A record that confirms there's no need to chase trap hype or the polish of contemporary mainstream pop in order to turn everyday life into soul literature. And to think that sometimes all it takes is a break...

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06/03/2026