Jill Scott

Though she was already known in her hometown of Philadelphia as a spoken word poet, Jill Scott etched her name into hip hop's consciousness by co-writing The Roots' 1999 song "You Got Me." Featuring rapper Black Thought's troubled pledges of loyalty and Erykah Badu's haunting vocals, the song is made memorable by Scott's ability to capture the terrifying nature of love tested. The song won a Grammy in 2000, and Scott would be known from there forward for accurately capturing relationship difficulties in song.

Scott broke out to the masses that year with her debut, Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1, which emphasized her boundless vocal range and her commitment to crunchy neo-soul. The album went twice platinum and snagged her four Grammy nominations, but it wasn't until her live album the following year, Experience: Jill Scott 826+, that she displayed her full potential as a performer. Part concert, part empowerment seminar, part political rally, and part slam poetry event, Experience… displayed Scott's near-evangelistic ability to mesmerize a crowd. "Slowly surely/ I walk away from self-serving/ Undeserving/ Constantly hurting me love/ Deserting me love," she sings on "Slowly Surely."

In an era when urban radio singers are expected to be young, slim and sexed-up, Scott stands out for her heavyset figure and feminist, afro-centric personality. In 2006 she made waves for calling the portrayal of black women in pop music "dirty, inappropriate, inadequate, unhealthy and polluted." Aligning herself with hip hop's "conscious" crowd, she joined forces with rappers Talib Kweli, Kanye West, Common, Dead Prez and The Roots for Michel Gondry's 2005 film Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Surrounded by compelling performers and playing before a crowd that was mostly there to see hip hop, Scott brought the house down with her earthy, gentle ad libs and her guttural, passionate singing.

In addition to another pair of engaging live albums (2004's Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds Vol. 2 and 2007's The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol. 3), Scott has also released a book of poetry, The Moments, The Minutes, The Hours, published by St. Martin's Press in 2005. Like her music, her poems touch on themes of female and black empowerment but are never overly preachy.

Her recent divorce and subsequent engagement have been overshadowed by stand-out performances as an actress, most notably in Tyler Perry's 2007 hit Why Did I Get Married? To Scott, the film's simple portrayal of professional black people in committed relationships – as opposed to drug addicts or violent ‘hood characters – was a revelation in itself. "We continue to see the same reflections again and again," she told entertainment web site Crave Online. "Everybody is in some kind of drug warfare. Everybody is in some kind of negative something. To see people who are established and are married and are working at it, to see that, that's a reality for a lot of us." Doing things differently in the entertainment industry, Scott seems to be saying, can be as challenging as making a relationship work.

—Ben Westhoff