Jill Scott Owns Apollo Debut After Earning It – August 9, 2016
Jill Scott is absolutely radiant these days. She’s killing it on stage with an amazing band as she emphatically showed at New York City’s most historic uptown theater. In the acting domain, she’s the #1 Lady at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency on HBO. And in the personal sphere, she just got married about six weeks ago!
She was ten feet tall on the Apollo stage last Tuesday evening. Surprisingly, as Scott has been an R&B force since the release of her outstanding 2000 debut Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1, she had never played the Harlem haunt before. Plans for a booking were hatched a few times in the past but things never came together. “After tonight, I’m happy it never worked out ten years ago or even two years ago.” Shortly after walking on, she purred, “It’s my first time and I feel like I’m on fire.”
Scott is touring behind her latest studio album Woman, her fifth, that was released last year. She explained she felt she needed to go through a certain amount of growth, and growth is often painful, before applying the term to herself. After the birth of a child and the end of a relationship she thought would last, she emerged clear-eyed and triumphant.
The Woman album came on the heels of Golden Moments, a retrospective that gives a good sampling of her first decade and a half of recording which is only one arrow in this woman’s quiver. She started as a poet and remains one. She’s also portrayed the second wife of James Brown in Get On Up and as Big Mama Thorton in Hounddog among many other roles on film and TV. As made plain by the mad catalog of her former jobs revealed in our conversation, she earned her success and it positions her well for the future. “Anything that is worth having is worth working for and that remains true…which is good, I like that.”