Philadelphia freedom The Roots and Jill Scott lead a neo-soul revolution BY FRANKLIN SOULTS

Released at either end of this summer, the Roots’ The Tipping Point (Okayplayer/Geffen/Universal) and Jill Scott’s Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds, Vol. 2 (Hidden Beach/Epic) are polar opposites grounded in the same proudly independent Philadelphia music scene. The seeds for that scene were planted in the late ’80s when two classmates at Philadelphia’s performing-arts high school, drummer Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and rapper Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter, came up with the cockamamie idea of forming an actual hip-hop band, one playing real instruments instead of samples. By the mid ’90s, the idea had reached its zenith, with ?uestlove and bassist Leonard "Hub" Hubbard working malleable hip-hop beats, electronic-keyboardist Scott Storch (later replaced by Kamal) dropping skewed lite-jazz vamps, Black Thought and fellow rapper Malik B. trading burred, muted raps, and human beatbox Rahzel riffing on the whole affair. It was the perfect refuge for the collapsing bohemian alt-rap movement of the early ’90s to flee to and find sustenance. The Roots amounted to a jam band, and just like the other jam bands (many of whose fans the Roots attracted), they offered all the nutrients necessary to sustain a community.

Unlike most jam bands, however, the Roots didn’t just nurture a cult and a few mini offshoot projects — they helped foster a collection of diverse new talents on the Philly scene. One of those was a then-unknown actress, poet, and singer named Jill Scott, who co-wrote the hit "You Got Me" on Things Fall Apart (MCA), the 1999 Roots album that many consider their masterpiece. A year later, Scott released her sleeper debut, Who Is Jill Scott?: Words and Sounds, Vol. 1 (Hidden Beach). Inflected with dreamy jazz and the lilting cadences of African-American poetry readings, it seemed a lighter side of the Roots’ vision, one that could be grouped with Floetry, Jaguar Wright and almost every new Philly phenom under the much abused mid-’90s moniker neo-soul.

"In part, I think neo-soul means a return to the live musical component," says my friend and colleague Daniel Gray-Kontar, a journalist and magazine entrepreneur who’s also an accomplished poet and rapper. "And I think that so much soul has gotten so formulaic, that when people coined the phrase ‘neo-soul,’ they just meant a return to going against the grain of formulas."

Dan was the first to introduce me to Jill Scott, weeks if not months before the mainstream music press had picked up on her, so he would know. But if neo-soul has indeed just become R&B’s synonym for "underground," "indie," or "alternative," it often also seems to connote an upwardly mobile sensibility, one fueled by retro touches nostalgic for the polite mannerisms of Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack, and other early-’70s wellsprings of black-pop gentility. Or if not gentility, then its avant-garde correlative, asceticism, the dreary vice of so much anti-commercial pop.

Much of what makes The Tipping Point and Beautifully Human such bracing pleasures is that the Roots and Jill Scott forgo all that. The Roots first turned away from neo-soul on their previous album, Phrenology (MCA), a 2002 release that pared the crew to four members and dove headlong into raw rock experimentation. The Tipping Point seems to portend equally momentous changes. Named after a Malcolm Gladwell book that theorizes how small social phenomena can suddenly acquire the force of cultural epidemics, the album starts off with a "virtual duet" that refashions a Sly Stone song, "Everybody Is a Star." In the itty-bitty print of the liner notes, ?uestlove declares this rendition "one of our five best songs in our whole history," and I see no reason to challenge him. Channeling the original through a slow, pulsing funk groove, the Roots turn Stone’s paean to freedom into a sad dirge for the failures of a materialist society where kids bowl for Columbine to fulfill ignorant dreams "about flooding the scenery with ya yo and greenery."

The rest of the album is something of a letdown, but give it time and you’ll figure maybe it’s supposed to be. Although the self-contained, dark neo-soul minimalism that the group mastered on Things Fall Apart is gone, the hooks cohere as organically as the loose jams on any other Roots disc, but with a reach and bite that the pre-Phrenology crew only tilted at. That may be because the quartet slowly whittled these tight tracks down from extended free-form jam sessions. They shaped the haranguing club chorus of "I Don’t Care" and the menacing electronics and mumbled threats of "Don’t Say Nuthin’ " not only to grab you but also to develop Black Thought’s portrait of a dysfunctional society at a tipping point. Halfway through, the crew set aside that portrait for a dose of nectar with the soulful "Stay Cool" and a shot of adrenaline with the extended old-school throwdowns "Web" and "Boom!" (In the latter, Black Thought mimics Big Daddy Kane and Kool G. Rap in a pair of head-turning verses.) The larger picture is then brought back into focus with the closing "Why (What’s Goin’ On?)," a portrait of "2K4" more pointed than just about any speech at the Democratic Convention. The album’s short, sharp ride is so neatly balanced between drawn guns and cool breezes, even the bonus-track remake of the silly ’80s club hit "Din Da Da" can be forgiven as a dinner-ending palate cleanser.

Not that many have bothered to enjoy the meal — it seems that fans who were willing to forgive the band for Phrenology have turned their noses up at this July 17 release, including much of the rock press. And that’s the danger Jill Scott runs with her second studio full-length. The 33-year-old hasn’t developed the multiple audiences that have sustained the Roots over the years. Indeed, her debut’s meandering, pretty tone poems won the hearts of neo-soul enthusiasts and almost no one else. No wonder the early, pre-release interviews for Beautifully Human were with Jet, Essence, and something called Upscale (subtitled "For the Affluent Lifestyle").

Beautifully Human confidently steps away from the jazz lounge set and into the beauty salons and coffee shops where you once would’ve heard the Waiting To Exhale soundtrack. Yet unlike Whitney, Toni, Mary J, Mariah, and their younger versions, Scott grounds her wandering melodies in the way real human beings speak. I sometimes think her guileless soprano is as soft and generic as Janet Jackson’s, a singer who has always known that her best recourse was to forget soul and reach for a solid pop hook on which to hang her delicate tonsils. Scott’s voice is far stronger than Jackson’s, however, and her timing and phrasing are phenomenal. "You have really fantastic singers, and then you have those vocalists who are able to come with these styles," says Daniel Gray-Kontar again. "Jill Scott is this generation’s most outstanding vocal stylist."

It takes a while for Beautifully Human to warm up, but when Scott blurts out "tweet, tweet" and then busts a gut as the guitars flutter away in one cutesy-poo number, it’s reminiscent of Sarah Vaughan, who laughed and joked her way through her concerts while plucking the heart out of each melody with her pinky. By the middle of the disc, Scott is unwinding into ambitious, rootsy tunes worthy of her talent. "Cross My Mind" is the first killer, a semi spoken-word tease that’s as taut and libidinal as prime Prince: "Kiss THIS and THIS and THIS," she climaxes, phrasing in a way that could be labeled obscene in half a dozen Southern states. Over the next five tracks, she ranges across temptations, sometimes ceding, mostly resisting ("I got somethin’ bedda at home," goes one chorus), as the music ranges through blues, gutbucket soul (the instant classic "Family Reunion"), and, in one magisterial display, everything from demure, Brazilian-tinged neo-soul to rowdy big band ("Talk to Me").

And then there are the lyrics: "Aunt Juicy been drinking again/Oooooh! It’s only 1:30 in the afternoon/Everybody tiptoein’ around her/We all know she’s gonna be torrrrre up soon/Sayin’ all the things we’d like to say." Bruce Springsteen move over and tell Chuck Berry the news. This middle section is so commanding, it’s a little disorienting when Scott takes her vocals back into the upper registers for more songs of domestic bliss as the album winds down.

Yet what may set Beautifully Human apart from most soul releases has to do with something Scott can’t control. Like Black Thought, whose childhood was framed by the murder of first his father and then his mother, she’s never forgotten the hard life in the North Philadelphia neighborhood where she was raised, and two songs that frame the disc prove it. "The Fact Is (I Need You)" is a moving plea for the presence of black males in the families they start — it’s as elegant as a Langston Hughes poem. And at the end, there’s "My Petition," a declaration of disenfranchisement so thorough, it drives home how poorly served the African-American community has been in the current election season. But as these albums prove, both the Roots and Jill Scott have deeper issues to deal with than one lousy election.