Jill Scott: Who Is Jill Scott? Words And Sounds Vol. 1 : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

With so many MC's generating so much creative verbiage, you'd think R&B would have absorbed at least some of that crazy wordplay. Jill Scott -- the Philadelphia songwriter behind the Roots' "You Got Me" -- wages a one-woman war on wack producer-penned R&B lyrics. Mixing song with recited poetry over live beats, Scott's debut recalls the heady lyrical gifts of Billie Holiday, Marvin Gaye, Teena Marie and Nikki Giovanni, just to name a few. But this free spirit is about more than words: Jazzy, honey-dipped arrangements bypass samples in favor of real strings, woodwinds, horns and drummers who swing. Although she can wrap her lips admirably around topics such as surveillance ("Watching Me") and self-reliance ("One Is the Magic #"), her preferred topic is love, and her stories capture its rich, oft-painful nuances: On "Exclusively," she relates how the checkout girl correctly identifies her supposedly monogamous lover simply through the scent he's left on Scott's body. This long-player smells like classic soul spirit. (RS 846)

BARRY WALTERS