EXCLUSIVE: JILL SCOTT SPEAKS TO MILK + HONEY

It’s 4:40pm on a Wednesday afternoon and I have 22 minutes left, which hopefully leaves enough time to make a cup of tea and clear the kitchen sink. In 22 minutes Milk + Honey will have the pleasure of interviewing Miss Jill Scott just before her two UK concerts next week, and yes I mean Jill Scott. Grammy award winning, soul/jazz/R&B songstress, songwriter, poet, actress, woman and mother Jill Scott. 22 minutes left until I’m to about hear Jill Scott’s voice come through the speakers of my Samsung GSII saying “Hello.”

A soft, yet warm voice at the other end of the phone greets me; it’s her. In this moment I want to declare my love for her and tell her how much she makes me laugh, cry, smile, think and feel, but I guess this is all a bit too heavy for a first interview so I ask her whether she is excited about coming back to the UK. She says how thrilled she is and how she enjoys performing here because “the audience is so alive and is so pleasant to be around.” 

Now the wake of this UK tour comes after the release of Jill’s fourth studio album The Light of the Sun, which came out back in June 2011. It did very well in its opening week debuting No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart selling 135,000 units. Many of her UK fans haven’t experienced the fourth album live yet, so her two concerts here are very big deal. Jill sounds as if she can’t wait to get on stage; “everything about the performance” and we should “expect a great show with lots of…energy.”

“I’m hoping that people will get married to my songs, make love to my songs and give birth to my music and cry sometimes…[and] if I can make you shake your butt a little bit and have a good time too…if I can do that, then I’m on the right path.”

Talk goes onto her fourth album, as I tell her Milk and Honey readers are keen to know what went behind it. This album seems highly experimental, it seems as if Jill has had the space, time and “freedom” to play about with different musical and lyrical genres and themes. She says that creatively she “was in a wonderful place of freedom” and “when people listen to this record they can hear…a woman getting lost and getting back up and getting lost again and finding her way; she is the light of the sun.”

I see similarities between Jill and her favourite artist, surrealist painter Salvador Dali who “put everything into his painting including his blood,” as Jill too is not afraid to put herself out there. She tells us that she wrote the song ‘Hear My Call’ when she was “at a complete loss” and she didn’t “know what to do, except pray.” “I’m speaking from a very human perspective. I’m not super cool, I don’t have all the answers, I’m just a woman trying to figure these things out…When I go through things I think other people have too. I never feel like I’m alone in the situation…I’d rather acknowledge those feelings than just scoff them down and hold then in my gut.” That is what Jill’s music is. It’s honest, real and passionate. Her blood may not being literally in her music, but the life that it pumps can surely be felt. 

Talking to Jill one can’t help but be in awe and not stop to think about the depth of her mind and how she can turn everything and anything around her into such beautiful poetry. “I’m inspired by all of it. Right now I’m in a hotel in Alabama, in the south and we passed through miles of where Martin Luther King walked and it’s 50 miles. You know as we’re driving I’m looking at 50 miles and I’m thinking how my feet hurt…you know after a few miles…or a block in an uncomfortable shoe and these folks were walking with suit’s in the hot southern sun, you know to make a point and I thought about all those thing…There’s a thousand songs in that. You know just from the heat, feeling the sun on your skin, to having conviction about something. Maybe losing someone, taking that walk because you lost someone, there’s a thousand stories in there that most people can relate to in some way shape or form.”

As Jill passionately talks about music one can’t help but notice the confidence and conviction within her words. She tells us that her grandmother (“Blue Babe”) who “raised five children” and “lived to be 91 years old’ gave her two pieces of advice that has continued to stay with her and believes will strike a chord with all Milk and Honey readers. The first one was  “never live beyond your means, live within your means…[as] you don’t have to try to show off for other people…the only thing it’ll do is put you in debt,” and always “listen to your gut. There’s a quiet voice in all of us that says don’t do this – well go that way, now!”

Jill tells me that she’s “working on a next record, recruiting artists as we speak.” The record is “all about the night…[the things] we do at night.” I tell her that the readers will be excited for the record and the possible artists that may be featured on it. She throws out names like “Rick Ross,” “Missy Elliot,” “Marc Antony,” and “Erykah Badu,” but nothing has been confirmed yet. She’s just putting “the word in their ear” so that when the time comes for her to get in the studio and a phone rings, they know who’s on the other end of the line.

Jill Scott, a woman’s whose belief in the expression and sharing of the human experience continues to inspire countless songs that strikes a chord in millions of hearts, one of those hearts being my own.

I’m left sitting alone at my desk in disbelief, reciting the words:

 “In order to leave a legacy you gotta put your guts our there. I don’t see it any other way. You have to tell the truth somewhere.”

o_O: YoYo

Jill Scott will be performing at the O2 Academy in Brixton on Wednesday 30^th November and is heading up north to the O2 Apollo in Manchester Friday 2^nd December. For Tickets go to Ticketmaster