by Dan O

When it was announced that Jill Scott would drop her first full album of new material since 2018 old heads like myself (with tired eyebrows) breathed a sigh of relief. We had the sense that the precious mineral we all feel missing from our lives was well within her powers to bring back. Her mixture of poetry, soul, rapping and joyful earnest conversation exists well outside of the commodity trappings the marketing were drenched in worked over top of us. We were hoping she could pull us  from under this thick algorithmic blanket. I didn’t know it would be an hour long but To Whom This May Concern has real moments. The joy of Jill and Tierra Whack on Norfside as well as Ode To Nikki with a locked in Ab-Soul. Nothing tops The Math. The first thing she says is “Could it be…we be buyin’ dreams to disguise what we don’t have. Could it be… we worship things, that ultimately can’t last.”  Every stanza seems ripped from the soul of someone who has watched the world turn into an old half eaten apple. She asks us how much we value our ugliness, outright. She asks us like an old friend with a smile and good intentions but deep concern for the rough edges that are where our care and consideration used to be. The production knows her voice is everything and swirls around it with percussive sounds lightly flavoring her concern. She asks us if we’ve given up on justice and let go of our standards. Her voice calls out not to give up on the possibility of justice in the absence of it. Her call at the end to multiply kindness and harmony is a call for focus shift. Instead of letting the terrible things tear apart our resolve we need to go on offense. Increase not just our own kindness and sense of community but rebuild the expectations for these attributes in general. It’s one of those songs that means everything, sums up everything and leaves in three and a half minutes.