After the massive success of Philadelphian poet-diva Jill Scott's debut album, the 'Experience' is a curious and confusing follow-up. Comprising two CDs and 120 minutes of music, the first disc is ostensibly that debut, 'Who Is Jill Scott?', performed live in Washington DC.
As anyone who's seen Scott themselves would expect, it's pretty impressive stuff. She floats and weaves round grooves like the 12-minute long version of 'Love Rain', extemporising with both delicacy and belligerence, coming across like nu-soul's very own Ella Fitzgerald. Everything goes on a bit, of course, but only an audience singalong in 'Do You Remember' and an ugly saxophone solo in 'The Way' really rankle. And when she says, "Thank you very much, I love me too," even that feels like self-respect rather than egomania.
Scott's political and social consciousness is stated more explicitly during a live rendition of her beat poem, 'Thickness', on CD2. "She's been degraded, exploited, not celebrated, saturated with self-hatred. . . Let her be elevated," she sings about a young girl she spotted at a bus-stop, and it's unusual to find serious messages carried with such grace and potency. What's less clear is how we should take the rest of this package. 'Thickness' apart, 'Experience''s second CD consists of new studio tracks. Whilst often gripping the trance-inducing psychedelic soul of 'Sweet Justice', the crackly trip-hop duet 'High Post Brotha' with Common, the breakbeat chorale of 'Be Ready' there's a sense that Scott is trying out a few new riffs and directions for size. The blazing hooks found throughout the live set are largely absent.
So if these are just experiments in preparation for the proper follow-up to 'Who Is Jill Scott?', they're an intriguing work-in-progress. If, however, 'Experience' is the finished thing packaged with a live album by an underwhelmed record company, the future plainly holds a few problems for Scott's previously unblemished career. A weird one.
