Jill Scott is without a doubt my favourite female artist of all time and in my opinion, the only singer worth going to see again and again and again. In a complete class of her own she never fails to really put on a show every time she blesses the stage. This year we checked her at Somerset House where she was performing as part of the Summer Series and as expected, Jilly from Philly gave her best performance yet.

The venue was packed full of what we all like to call “grown folk” and miss Ma and I seemed to be the youngest fans there. We didn’t mind though, in fact it made a refreshing change and was quite nice to mingle and settle amongst such a friendly and smiley group of people who were clearly just as eager as we were to catch a glimpse of the Queen of Neo-Soul.

Dressed in a sexy pink and black number Miss Scott set the crowd alight as soon as she wiggled across to the mic and despite being asked before the show to refrain from taking pictures, no one in the audience could help themselves from snapping away at the sparkling woman standing strong on stage. She opened with It’s Love and there was no need for us to work ourselves into the groove, she put us in the thick of it right away. I think I may have gotten a little too excited and carried away during the show however, because the woman standing in front of me turned around a couple of times in order to express her dissatisfaction at how noisy I was being. I couldn’t care less though, I was lost in the vibes and could only smile back and sing louder in response to her cutting her eye at me.

Jill made sure to cover all of our favourites during her set including: Quick, Epiphany, Hate On Me and The Real Thing (video below).

Following what seems to be a recurring trend amongst many singers these days, she didn’t come back after her exit for an encore. Instead she chose to finish and close the show with a grand and absolutely stunning operatic version of He Loves Me. Her performance of this song in particular, as well as the ever sensual Imagination come to think of it (which she had performed close to the start), was literally breath taking and honestly you cannot fully appreciate this woman’s talent until you have seen, heard and felt her perform live; she is one of those that sounds even better in person than on the record. Her dancing backing singers, The Pipes, were just as gorgeous and the awesome threesome oozed the same amount of energy and charisma as the star herself, their vocals complimenting Jill’s perfectly.

When you see her live it strikes you that not only does Miss Scott have an incredible voice, she also has one of the warmest most vibrant personalities, which last night could be felt wherever on the floor you were standing I’m sure. She entertained us on so many different levels and I absolutely adored how she could speak on her experience of love, come with some soulful poetry charged with raw emotion and then effortlessly turn around, whip a wig on, fix her boobs in plain sight of everybody and start talking about “ball fresh” (sorry kids, you had to be there!) Unlike many artists she doesn’t operate under some sort of forced or contrived persona and best of all doesn’t seem to take herself too seriously. She is real and doesn’t try to hide it, rather, she embraces and celebrates it and by doing so encourages you  to do the same. And it is exactly this reason I find her so relatable and why I will forever be a fan. I think it’s obvious I was feeling all dreamy and in awe of her presence last night, I most certainly was (I think I’ve developed some kind of weird “I wanna be her” girl crush) and could have easily held my position there in the rain for many more hours. Instead I had to make do with joining in with everyone around me humming the melody of He Loves Me as we all shuffled our way out of the venue towards the direction of the nearest McDonalds.

For more videos from the night you can visit our YouTube channel.