Miss Jill Scott, Black History Month

Three-time GRAMMY award-winning singer-songwriter Jill Scott

Miss Jill Scott.

I love you.

Not because you have a beautiful face and a wonderful body and a delicious voice, but because of what and who you represent. You carry the voices of black women who wailed, sang, shouted, hollered, cried, laughed and hummed before you.

I love the darkness of your gums peaks through your smiling lips. I love your eyes. I love your teeth. I love your songs. I love your style. I love your hair. I love the clothes you wear. The makeup on your face. I love your round checks and dimpled chin. Every song you have written stirs me. Your lyrics create ripples in me. With your music, I grew and I am still growing, still maturing and finding my place in this world. Thank you for being so unabashedly you.

This Black History Month, I think of you Miss Jill Scott and everything you stand for – black women with voices. I don’t mean voices as singers, but voices of survivors. Conquerors, vessels of life and daughters of the Divine. Triumphant women who do not need to shout. Their presence alone does all the singing.

I use my voice to say thank you and to express my gratitude to Black women who know who they are, and who wear their dignity high, like afros blowing in the wind.

Miss Jill Scott, your song Long Walk…it’s an old one, but a golden one. I heard it when it first came out. I was 15. After that, I followed you like a puppy. I read everything I could read about you on the internet, drowned my senses in your music…I was so happy that you were you, not overtly sexual and overtly stylized – just cool, real, and unabashedly black.

#BlackHistoryMonth

A Long Walk – by Jill Scott

You’re here, I’m pleased
I really dig your company
Your style, your smile, your peace mentality
Lord, have mercy on me
I was blind, now I can see
What a king’s supposed to be
Baby I feel free, come on and go with me

Let’s take a long walk around the park after dark
Find a spot for us to spark
Conversation, verbal elation, stimulation
Share our situations, temptations, education, relaxations
Elevations, maybe we can talk about Surah 31:18

Your background it ain’t squeaky clean (shit)
Sometimes we all got to swim upstream
You ain’t no saint, we all are sinners
But you put your good foot down and make your soul a winner
I respect that, man you’re so phat
And you’re all that, plus supreme
Then you’re humble man I’m numb
Yo with feeling, I can feel everything that you bring

Or maybe we can see a movie
Or maybe we can see a play on Saturday (Saturday)
Or maybe we can roll a tree and feel the breeze and listen to a symphony
Or maybe chill and just be, or maybe
Maybe we can take a cruise and listen to the Roots or maybe eat some passion fruit
Or maybe cry to the blues
Or maybe we could just be silent
Come on, Come on