Jill Scott plays the hits on ‘To Whom This May Concern’ tour at The Met

There’s a scene in the 2005 concert documentary Dave Chappelle’s Block Party where Jill Scott tells us exactly who she is. Seated in the green room backstage, Scott is watching a live feed of Erykah Badu on stage. Off camera, the interviewer asks Scott if she is nervous to follow Badu’s performance. Without missing a beat, Scott looks directly into the camera and chuckles, “Have you ever SEEN me perform?” The film documented an all-day Brooklyn concert whose lineup was stacked with some of the biggest names in hip-hop and neo-soul, with The Roots serving as the “house band” for the day.

At the time, Badu was arguably the biggest star among this cadre of Roots-affiliated acts. Six years earlier, the two soul songstresses’ careers intertwined when Scott penned the chorus for The Roots’ Grammy-winning single “You Got Me.” As Scott was a relative unknown at the time, Badu was tapped to sing on the song’s official release. The two would spend the next few years being compared in the press, and fans ran to online message boards to float rumors of a beef between the two. The laugh that Scott let out when she was asked about following Badu onstage was colored by all of this context, but that’s not all that’s happening in that scene. “Have you ever SEEN me perform?” was not just Scott rejecting a comparison to a peer; she was making a statement brimming with the confidence of a master of the stage.

This month, Scott’s “To Whom This May Concern Tour” touched down at The Met in North Philly for a four-night run of concerts. Named after Scott’s latest album, the tour is a veritable greatest hits showcase of her 20-plus-year career. On night three of her Philly residency, Scott fans packed The Met for an electrifying set of songs spanning the decades. When Scott made her way to the stage, the hometown crowd erupted with excitement.

The band then launched into a funky, brassy version of “Be Great,” lifting the energy in the room immediately. “Beautiful People” and “Liftin’ Me Up” are a pair of gorgeous tunes from To Whom This May Concern that Scott’s band augmented with some rock-solid go-go grooves. Toward the end of “Liftin’ Me Up,” Scott and her background singers incorporated a slick interpolation of Jackie Wilson’s classic “Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher and Higher” to great effect.

From there, Scott and the ensemble segued into a few familiar hits from the earlier stages of her career. The energy of “It’s Love” practically oozed from the stage. A beloved classic from Scott’s 2000 debut Who Is Jill Scott? Words And Sounds Vol. 1, the song coaxed the crowd to sing along joyously while dancing in the balcony. Much like the studio version of “You Got Me,” Scott’s “Getting In The Way” was updated with a nimble, double-time drum part that evoked the sound of U.K. drum and bass.

Throughout the set, Scott’s voice and the band’s instrumentation were top-notch. Whether she was performing her well-known early classics or jams from her freshly released album, Scott held the entire theater in the palm of her hand. Between her playful banter, artful riffs, and powerhouse vocalizing, there was not a dull moment to be found in this daring, spirited show.

Scott backed up the self-assurance that she flashed in the Chapelle documentary. In that moment, she wasn’t laughing out of cockiness; she understood that all she needed was a witness to prove that she was one of the best live performers in the world. This is still the case more than 20 years after the fact, and on a packed Monday night at The Met, everyone in attendance got to see Jill Scott for who she is through the lens of what she does best.