by vivrant thang on jill scott

…how YOUR girl Jill Scott cut up on Saturday night. I’m not going to have time for a full concert review because for one, I’ve got about sixty other videos I need to download before those (Raheem and Chrisette Michele, Bilal, J*Davey, Rahsaan Patterson) – although I am SO tempted to push hers ahead of the rest. Once again, Jill had me mesmerized.

You can find concert reviews, video and pictures here and here.

Some additional thoughts:

I need more more more Estelle in my life! Understandably, her set was short since she opened ahead of DC go-go legend Chuck Brown, The Roots, and Jill. She did about five or six songs – including my fave “Substitute Lover” which I’ll be rocking hard in Barbados because of its Caribbean flavor.

Was great to see V, Ra-Re Valverde, and Chinahblac backing Jill. I mentioned V in my last review.  You should get to know Ra-Re. She has an album out called “A Beautiful Mess“ (love that title because that’s how I refer to myself on many a day!) Her talent has been co-signed by some of the greats. Get into her.

I was officially done with Jill for the night when she opened her “trying to get you laid” part of the show. She did “Come See Me” and then noticed some folks starting to leave. She says, “They got to go! They can’t even make it home. They got to get to the car right now!” Then she did “Crown Royal” and talked about the great old school love songs and how when you invite your man over, you got to take the batteries out of B.O.B (your battery operated boyfriend) and put them in the remote for the stereo.

DEAD.

When you press play, you hear this:

ChinahBlac put a HURTING on Teena Marie’s “Portugese Love”

V killing the Isley Brothers “Between The Sheets.” He could do no wrong with me since the Philly show when he reminded me of how much I love Atlantic Starr’s “Send For Me.”

Ra-Re did her thang on Prince’s “Do Me.”

I was done.

Video evidence is coming because my description just can’t capture it.

Jill-ism of the night: “Shit on your shoe don’t keep you from walking.” Hate on me indeed!

She ended her set of mostly tracks from the new album with a nice up-tempo, house version of “Lyzel in E Flat (He Loves Me).” The encore included The Roots and Chuck Brown joining her on stage for “It’s Love.” She praised Chuck for introducing her to that go-go sound. Chuck Baby didn’t really know the words and I was begging Jill to take the mic back and just let him ad-lib which is what she eventually did and it was pure fiyah!

As she has been doing at every show, she came out as everyone was filing out to do “And I Heard,” the song she says came to her in her sleep. Some crazy woman kept yelling out “Obama!” I guess she wanted Jill to do an Obama freestyle. Jill simply warned us not to continue making this race about a black man running. We better focus on his politics or we might “fuck it up.” I see her point but that’s impossible.

What I love about Jill’s concerts is that I’ve seen her three times in the past year and a half and her shows are never the same. I love how she changes up her arrangements and the set lists are different. She’s just versatile like that and I love her for it.

Just as my high was just starting to come down, I head on over to catch up with one of my favorite, most-respected bloggers, Afrobella and see that she has called me a “brilliant” music blogger while referencing my Rock The Bells review in her excellent review of the Miami show.  She is certainly at the very top of my list of favorite female bloggers so that damn near had me misty!

While we’re on the subject of favorite bloggers, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Black Weblog Awards. Voting is now underway. I would never tell you how to vote, except if we’re talking about the general election 🙂 However, I would invite you to consider throwing your vote in several categories to the good folks over at Soul Bounce.  Nova, Butta, Harlem, and Ill Mami bust their hindparts every single day to bring you original, extremely well-written content about the latest and greatest in the music industry – and that’s hard to find on the Internets.

Here are the categories they’d like your vote in.  Frankly, they deserve all of them but I’m sure they will take as many as you can spare! If you’re not convinced, take a listen to them speaking about the evolution of Soul Bounce and why they do what they do on Friday Favecast.

So head on over and ROCK THE VOTE.

I didn’t vote Soul Bounce in every category. Afrobella, Friday Favecast,  AverageBro, and Black and Married With Kids, and Crunk and Disorderly were just a few of sites that got my vote as well.

Whichever way you vote, just do it!

Monster post coming this week. Stay tuned!

photo credit: African Olmecca