- - Jill Scott on Family, Healing, and Making Her First Album in Over a Decade

Brittany SpanosFebruary 11, 2026 at 6:30 PM

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Jill Scott Would Do It All Over Again Chrris Lowe

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Jill Scott photographed in Los Angeles in 2025. Chrris Lowe

When Jill Scott is ready to make an album, she needs to live a little first. And there’s a lot of life the neo-soul legend has lived since releasing 2015’s Woman. She’s toured off and on, starred in BET’s First Wives Club series, and guest-starred on beloved sitcoms like Black-ish and Abbott Elementary. More importantly, she’s healed herself and her family.

“I’m taking time to navigate my kids’ existence and to get my mother together and make sure she’s good,” she says. “I took time to grieve my father. I’ve taken time to learn how to live better than I was before. Clearly, it’s not all divine and perfect.”

She corrects herself quickly: “Well, it is divine, but it’s not all perfect. I’ve been livin’, honey. That’s what it is.”

All that livin’ fed into To Whom This May Concern, Scott’s first album in over a decade and her third as an independent artist. Scott’s sixth album arrives nearly 26 years into the Philly native’s career, after she swapped a teaching degree for the stage. Early collaborations with the Roots, Erykah Badu, Common, Eric Benét, and Will Smith propelled her into R&B stardom, a trio of Grammy wins, and radio success with hits like “Golden.”

Scott performing in the U.K. in 2000. getty images

Released last month, Scott’s new music is exuberant, organic, and alive. You can hear it explode on the first single, “Beautiful People,” a song that celebrates the “village” that supported her in the time between albums. The single’s cover art is a candid picture of her mom Joyce, mouth wide and mid-laugh.

“There’s a lot of soul, a lot of passion, a lot of honesty in this music,” Scott says. In order to make it, she both leaned on and expanded her creative family. The featured artists, musicians, and producers are modern greats in hip-hop, jazz, soul, and R&B—Tierra Whack and Too $hort among them. Scott says her songs are written like a “scavenger hunt,” where she’s finding bits and pieces of it over time—a process that’s similar to how she reconnected with or met the artists who contributed to To Whom This May Concern.

“It’s all been spirit-driven and organic,” she says. “I bumped into DJ Premier in Japan. I didn’t know he was in Japan, so I was shocked—one of my favorite DJs and producers of all time is just in the fan store getting a fan.” She ended up spending some time in New York at his studio to record. “That’s really how all of this occurred,” she adds.

Chrris Lowe

Working with Trombone Shorty began as a suggestion from a friend. She was introduced to rapper Ab-Soul, who appears on the track “Ode to Nikki,” through the rapper Rapsody. “She told me that Ab-Soul was cool as fuck, and I was like, ‘Okay, let me find out,’” Scott says. “Boom, instant friendship, chemistry, camaraderie, jokes.”

She met producer and mixing engineer Vincent “VT” Tolan, who worked on “Beautiful People,” at a party. “It was just festive, and people were having a great time and laughing,” she says. “There he was, and his approach was so genuine that I gave him my number. I’m not out here just giving out my number to people. But I gave him my number, and he has become one of my favorite producers of all time.”

Unusually, instead of flying her collaborators in, Scott often went to the cities and studios where they lived. This allowed her the chance to immerse herself in their culture, sound, and scene. She spent time in New York with DJ Premier, in Atlanta with David Banner, and in Los Angeles with Gary Beals. She took multiple trips, chipping away with them. “There’s something about going after it and going to get it,” she reflects.

She compares her process to that of Bisa Butler, an innovative textile artist who makes quilts by traveling the world to find a specific fabric, printed a certain way. “I’m open to inspiration wherever I go, and I’m looking for the exact right fit.” Knitting it all together felt like a personal revolution for Scott, one she says not everyone is ready for. “So that’s why I called it To Whom This May Concern, because not everybody is ready for a revolution,” she says. “Some people want to keep the status quo.”

Scott performing in Los Angeles in 2004. getty images

With nearly three decades in the music business under her belt, Scott remarks that she’s seen enough to make her “concerned and maybe a little sad sometimes” about the state of the industry. She doesn’t want to wallow in those feelings, nor offer false positivity. “I wanted to lift the spirit and call a thing a thing as well. The idea of being joyful becomes boxed in. I’m just being realistic,” she offers, soberly. “I know good people, and I love them, and they love me in return. We laugh hard. I sleep with my mouth open. I’m at peace. Children and animals like me. I see people who have a smile in their eyes, and all it takes is a return smile. Then there’s something kind coming from their lips. We make it seem like this is some kind of destination. It’s a practice, and it’s every day.”

For Scott, life, like her music, is all about time, patience, and hard work. She’s seen it pay off in recent years. In 2020, she and old friend Erykah Badu participated in a viral Verzuz Instagram Live battle. They were the first women to do so, and it raked in over 700,000 viewers, including Michelle Obama, Janet Jackson, Quincy Jones, and Spike Lee. In 2022, Beyoncé’s “The Queens Remix” of her song “Break My Soul” gave a special shout-out to “Jilly from Philly.” And years of fan demand have encouraged a “threequel” to Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?, in which Scott will reprise her role as Sheila.

“I feel valued,” Scott says. “I feel valid in these streets. I’m an OG for real. I’ve earned my stripes. It’s been a very, very great experience being me. I’d do it all again.”

This story appears in the March 2026 issue of ELLE.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”