Album Review: Beautifully Human: Words And Sounds Vol. 2 by Jill Scott

You don't have to agree with the sleevenotes, which insist that Jill Scott is "the best performer of her generation, one of the best emerging poets walking the planet", to be beguiled by her second album. Though it sags a bit over the course of 72 minutes, the effect is that of being sung to privately by a vocalist who has mastered the art of intimacy. Her lyrics can be contentious ("I'm not afraid to be your whore"), droll ("I could be a computer analyst/The queen with nappy hair") or journalistic ("Rasool lay dead in my north Philly street/ At 15 years old, it was the first death I'd seen), but they rarely fail to engage.

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