The acclaimed musician Jill Scott immerses herself deeply in her songwriting, often dedicating months or even years to perfect a single verse. It has been over ten years since her last record, and this month’s release, ‘To Whom This May Concern,’ her sixth album, is a labor of love she hopes will spark ‘a personal revolution’ in its listeners. Now residing in Tennessee, Scott, 53, began her career in the late 1990s as a spoken-word poet in Philadelphia. Her path to becoming a solo artist was paved by co-writing The Roots’ 1999 hit ‘You Got Me.’ The following year, she launched her debut album, ‘Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1,’ which featured ‘A Long Walk,’ a soulful track that became her first Top 10 entry on Billboard’s R&B and hip-hop chart. Beyond music, she has authored a poetry collection, ‘The Moments, the Minutes, the Hours’ (2005), derived from her personal journals, and starred in various films and television series, notably the BBC and HBO dramedy ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ (2008-09), where she portrayed a Botswana private investigator.
Similarly, artist Bisa Butler’s creative endeavors are meticulously time-intensive. Butler, raised in South Orange, N.J., delves into photographic archives and family albums, reinterpreting them into elaborate quilted portraits. Drawing inspiration from the vibrant palettes of the 1980s and ’90s, and artists like Faith Ringgold from the Black Power era who favored bold colors in their paintings and textile art, Butler, 52, meticulously sources vivid fabrics from Ghanaian and South African markets, and from Dutch manufacturers for exquisite wax prints. In her Jersey City studio, she layers these swatches akin to topographical maps. For instance, in her monumental quilt ‘The Warmth of Other Sons’ (2020), named after Isabel Wilkerson’s 2010 book detailing Black families’ experiences during America’s Great Migration, she incorporated a ‘Jumping Horse’ print, a fabric commonly worn by Igbo women at communal gatherings.
Scott and Butler convened at a New York studio on a subdued December day. Their discussion touched upon their mutual interests in teaching and portraiture, and how their lives unfold amidst such demanding artistic pursuits.
Bisa Butler: Your new music felt like it was surrounding me and affirming me. I felt stronger listening to it.
Jill Scott: Thank God. I don’t know if this album is for everybody. I just know it’s ‘to whom this may concern.’ Who’s supposed to get it is gonna get it. I want it to feel like there’s a void when it’s over, where the silence is too loud and either you’re going to get up and do something or you’re going to start the record over. You’re going to really think about where you are and if it’s what you actually want. What you do is you capture a person in their strength and weakness.
B.B.: When I’m working on a portrait, I’m trying to figure out who that person is. Some of these photos are 100 years old. They’re not named properly. It’ll just say, ‘Negro washerwoman,’ or ‘Negro porter,’ but you and I know — we know our family members: their brilliance, their humor, their sorrow.
J.S.: Their gifts.
B.B.: The things that only they have and, once their life and light is extinguished, it’s never to be seen again. I’m trying to put that all in.
J.S.: You do it. We have our Romare Bearden, who was obviously making collages, and we have our wild, insane Salvador Dalí. That’s who I loved as I was growing up and becoming an artist, and it means so much to add you to that list.
B.B.: I’ve only had a studio for three years. Most quilters work at home. It’s a type of art you can do with your kids and your family. I was working at the dining room table, so when it was time to eat I had to put my stuff away. Now I don’t have to stop midstream, and I find my work is probably more intense: You’d think I worked faster, but it’s slower.
J.S.: Eight months, maybe, for a piece? You’re going around the world and finding fabrics, and then layering these fabrics to become a whole other thing. I love when you add a sheer piece to something that’s fuzzy or lumpy. You give things such great dimension.
B.B.: One eye can take me at least five hours. I keep looking at the fringe on your shawl. Those little pieces could be the shine in the eye, just a little dot of light. I’m always looking at textures and seeing what I could do with them. My mother made dresses, so I often use dressmakers’ fabrics. She was just like, ‘These are my leftover remnants. You can use them and make stuff.’ And that was her legacy to me.
J.S.: What was the first piece you made and said, ‘This is it’?
B.B.: I did a portrait of my grandfather, who I never met. He passed, probably in the 1940s, of appendicitis in northern Ghana — not Accra, so he couldn’t get to the hospital in time. There were no existing photographs. My father lost him young. I only know stories. I wanted to see my grandfather, so I found a photo of an older man from northern Ghana and asked my father for his dashikis because I needed fabric. So in a way, my grandfather’s DNA is in the portrait. I thought, ‘I’m just making a portrait; I’d like to see if I can do it.’ And when I finished that piece, I knew: ‘I can do this.’
J.S.: An amalgamation of many lifetimes — that’s what your work looks like to me. That’s what I want mine to feel like. I want to be Frankie Beverly. I want to be Bette Midler. Those are my heroes. I’m 53 years old and I’m happy about that. I’ve been waiting to be this age my whole life. But it means that I’ve got to get more rest, and I do. I make sure to plan my life around the things that I need.
B.B.: I feel more self-assured now, and I’m OK with saying, ‘I don’t like that.’ My mother suffered in life. She struggled a lot, especially from 50 on, healthwise. She had generational financial issues. I didn’t know that 50 would be like this; I’m 52 now. I feel so lucky. I’m still working hard at it, but I think I work even harder because I’m like, ‘Well, I have to do this for her, too.’ For my grandmother and my grandmother’s grandmother. That I can be in a place that they couldn’t, just being able to pay my bills every month and not having to worry that I’m not going to have enough. That’s a place that they didn’t experience, probably ever.
J.S.: Ever.
T Magazine: When you’re spending so much time on these works, what do the days feel like?
J.S.: I shut down for a while. It’s like I have another name and experience another life. I become this other person and go and spend time as her. When I take my time, Jill Scott doesn’t live in my house. She doesn’t answer my phone, she doesn’t talk to my mother. It’s just me, and that normally fortifies me, keeps me grounded and dreaming, because sometimes I think you could achieve so much that you stop dreaming. So I take a break from her. As far as creating, I don’t get everything all at once. Sometimes I’m lucky. Either way, I feel like I’m winning. I’ll get a verse, and it’ll sit for a month, six months, a year. It’s a slow process, but I see the benefit, and I know that it’s coming. I believe it.
B.B.: I don’t have your ease with time. I’ve tried to have assistants, and it’s just not the same. So it’s slow, and I just have to roll with it. But it hasn’t been easy, because we’re in a fast-fashion, fast-art environment. I’m constantly bombarded with my artist peers who are doing a lot. And I’m not doing a lot.
J.S.: Oh, please stay the course. In music we talk about this. There are artists who have hits, big No. 1 singles — boom! You just have to remember that during, let’s say, Marvin Gaye’s time, there were other artists who had massive hits. But we’re still playing Marvin Gaye.
B.B.: You’re speaking of artists who sacrifice for their art, and it wasn’t quick, it may not have been easy, but the residue, the remnants, the resonance that they left is so powerful.
T: Bisa, you taught for 15 years. Jill, you studied in college to become a teacher. How does that affect your work?
J.S.: Once you’ve got the spirit of a teacher, you’re going to teach. I just think you find a new medium. I wanted to be a psychologist and I wanted to be an English teacher, and I ended up being both without the formal education.
B.B.: I agree. I know how to take a big thing and break it into smaller parts so that everybody can understand it. I want the whole room to get it.
J.S.: Being onstage, sometimes I’ll feel that the audience is moving in another direction. So now I have to pay attention to that feeling. It’s very tai chi-ish. It’s the same with educating people. You find out where they are, respectfully. You figure out what’s not working in the class and then switch and do something different.
B.B.: That’s fascinating because you’re not talking about 30 teenagers in a room. You’re able to pick up a collective energy from thousands of people and move to where you feel they need you to be. That’s some kind of sorcery.
J.S.: Or I move them to where I need them to be.
B.B.: You’re an antenna.
J.S.: It costs more to be an artist today than I’ve ever known it to, because audiences want immediate gratification. I didn’t have to fight the internet so much in the beginning. I didn’t have to fight the desire to have everything on video in the beginning. Now everybody is there with their physical body, but their presence isn’t there. That part is something I have to adjust to. I have to be stronger.
T: Bisa, portraiture is essential to your work. Jill, your 2004 song “Rasool” is a moving musical portrait about your friend who was killed. In this violent and alienating time, what is the power of the portrait?
B.B.: I think it allows people to take a moment. I want you to see a real human being who has feelings that are just as important as yours. It doesn’t matter if this person is physically alive or not. Because they exist, and I want you to acknowledge that. I don’t think you’d kill anyone, ever, if you really thought that everybody mattered.
J.S.: You’re right, we probably wouldn’t harm each other if we could see and understand the gravity of what it takes to create a human being and to live a life. There’d be so much more respect among us all.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Jill Scott: Hair: Jadis Jolie at E.D.M.A. Makeup: Raisa Flowers at E.D.M.A