{"id":3408,"date":"2026-03-09T17:54:34","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T17:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/2026\/03\/jill-scott-lose-weight-straighten-hair\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T17:54:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T17:54:34","slug":"jill-scott-lose-weight-straighten-hair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/2026\/03\/jill-scott-lose-weight-straighten-hair\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting In The Way: Jill Scott Was Told To Lose Her Copious Curves & Straighten Her Neo-Soul Strands Before Releasing Her Debut Album"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jill Scott<\/a> may be loved \u201cespecially different\u201d by fans, but that same admiration apparently wasn\u2019t extended to her by an exec who thought her look was getting in the way of her success. <\/p>\n

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Source: Josh Brasted \/ Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fresh off the release of To Whom This May Concern<\/em>, her first album in over a decade, Jilly from Philly <\/a>is taking it back 26 years, when she was trying to break into the industry. <\/p>\n

According to the \u201cHe Loves Me\u201d sonsgtress, she was urged to conform to a more commercial look by a record exec who thought her copious curves, coils and kinks, would hinder her career.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI had somebody tell me in the beginning of my career that if I didn\u2019t lose weight, or if I didn\u2019t straighten my hair or whatever, that I\u2019d never sell any records,\u201d she told People.<\/a><\/em> \u201cThat sucked, but luckily I didn\u2019t listen to them and decided to just continue to be myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a Black woman, and I love it. It\u2019s revolutionary to be comfortable in your own skin,\u201d she added, while discussing one of her new tracks, \u201cPressha,\u201d which features lyrics about self love.<\/p>\n

Jilly, of course, didn\u2019t listen to negativity about her look, and the result was a double platinum debut album titled Words and Sounds Vol. 1<\/em>, which gave the world hits like \u201cHe Loves Me,\u201d \u201cGettin In The Way,\u201d \u201cA Long Walk,\u201d and \u201cThe Way.\u201d With over 25 million records sold since then, everyone\u2019s favorite soul vocalist has proven that she was always more than enough. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cMy mother and I had a rough go of it in the beginning\u2026We were in a community where you would hear gunshots on a regular basis. There was a summer when I lost a lot of friends, young men that I knew. My mother taught me to keep looking for beauty no matter what. I just kept finding a reason to believe in myself, to have some joy and create joy around me,\u201d\u00a0she said about her ability to alchemize pain into beauty and triumph. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Though Jill\u2019<\/a>s music never left our rotation, it\u2019s been lovely to have new songs to add to the collection of her tracks that speak to the soul. She has given us some of our favorite TV and film moments in the years since her last musical release. Her lead roles in everything from Tyler Perry\u2019s Why Did I Get Married? <\/em>to BET\u2019s The First Wives Club<\/em> were all just what the doctor ordered to give us a little Jill to hold us over. <\/p>\n

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Jill has also been putting on a masterclass in album rollouts. Since first announcing her new album, she\u2019s dropped by popular podcasts delivering transparent interviews with a dash of spice, humor and a whole lot of grown woman wisdom. During her stop on The Joe Budden Podcast<\/em>, she hilariously revealed how much she loved the Drake and Kendrick beef. <\/p>\n

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\u201cThere was so much stuff about the beef,\u201d she said. \u201cI just, I loved every second of it. I was like, \u2018ooo what he say?\u2019. It was delicious.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Budden also revealed that the singer confirmed that there was something in the water between the two rappers before anyone else did. We love a little-known Black History fact. <\/p>\n

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And, of course, our girl is never going to leave us without some words of wisdom to carry with us along the way. During her sit down with Angie Martinez for the IRL Podcast<\/em>, Jill made it clear that she contains multitudes. <\/p>\n

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\u201cI am all of this woman,\u201d she began. \u201cI am every bit of it. I am a mother, a daughter. I am vulnerable. I am aggressive, I am submissive. I am a learner, I am dumb. I am figuring it out as I go. I hang with really amazing people who love me forreal, forreal. I pay my bills. I go on dope vacations. I do a lot of dope s*** on the regular because I think that\u2019s what\u2019s supposed to happen. I\u2019m a woman enjoying my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, Jill!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The post Getting In The Way: Jill Scott Was Told To Lose Her Copious Curves & Straighten Her Neo-Soul Strands Before Releasing Her Debut Album<\/a> appeared first on Bossip<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jill Scott may be loved \u201cespecially different\u201d by fans, but that same admiration apparently wasn\u2019t extended to her by an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14044,"featured_media":3707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[10,9],"class_list":["post-3408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-rss","tag-culture","tag-hip-hop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14044"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}