Jill Heather Scott (born April 4, 1972)[2] is an American singer, songwriter, model, poet, and actress.

Beginning in 2018, Scott appeared in The CW DC Comics superhero series Black Lightning as Lady Eve.

However, after three years of study and then working as a teacher's aide, Scott became disillusioned with a teaching career and she dropped out of college.

[9] Afterwards Scott collaborated with Eric Benet, Will Smith, and Common; she broadened her performing experience by touring Canada in a production of the Broadway musical Rent.

She experienced some notice and chart success with the single "A Long Walk," eventually earning a Grammy nomination in early 2003 for Best Female Vocal Performance.

Scott continues to write poetry; a compilation volume of her poems, The Moments, The Minutes, The Hours, was published and released by St. Martin's Press in April 2005.

[12][13] The Collaborations collection served as "an appetizer" for her next studio album, The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol.

[14] A clip of the title track was released on a bonus disc from Hidden Beach Records and included with Collaborations.

In the same year, "Whenever You're Around," a single from The Real Thing, which features George Duke was a moderate hit on urban radio.

Early in 2010, Scott was sued by Hidden Beach Records for leaving halfway through her six-album contract and owing millions of dollars in damages.

[16] The label's founder, Steve McKeever, claimed that he helped launch Scott's career and nurtured her into a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, but was unceremoniously dumped in October after a 10-year plus relationship.

To offset the damages, Hidden Beach planned to release several compilation albums consisting of previously unreleased material by Scott.

Previously titled Just Before Dawn, the album was asked to be paused by Scott so that fans would not get confused with the new material she was releasing, especially the new studio album The Light of the Sun, which was also being released around that time under a distribution deal that Scott and Warner Brothers signed in early 2011.

[17] The deal gives Scott direct control over her marketing and promotions and releases her music under her imprint of Blues Babe Records.

The album was preceded by the promo single "Shame," which was released on Scott's SoundCloud account in April 2012.

The tour was a hit, selling out venues throughout the country with opening acts Anthony Hamilton and legendary group Mint Condition.

The album's second official single, "So Gone (What My Mind Says)," featuring Paul Wall, was released in August 2011, and the video premiered on September 13 on E!

More than 700,000 viewers tuned in to the battle, including Christina Aguilera, Michelle Obama, Spike Lee, Quincy Jones and Janet Jackson.

Scott is a soprano who has infused jazz, opera, R&B, spoken word, and hip hop in a style often called neo-soul.

"[25] Other reviewers have celebrated her for "putting bass in her soprano voice," "elegant vocals," "warm womanliness" and "populat[ing] her music with images of regular people".

[26] Reviewer Anupa Mistry writes: "Scott’s attention to conversations and consciousness in her particular community and black America at large solidified her music as being of the people.

She wrote about hip-hop, jazz, reparations, Abrahamic religious texts, soul food (and what collards do to your bowels), the noted and imprisoned activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, diasporic ideation, going to the market, and late nights on the phone...Jilly from Philly...stays keeping it real.

In 2004, Scott appeared in several episodes of season four of UPN's Girlfriends, playing Donna, a love interest to main character, William Dent (Reggie Hayes).

In 2008, Scott appeared as Precious Ramotswe in Anthony Minghella's film adaption of Alexander McCall Smith's series of books The No.

She starred with Paula Patton and Derek Luke in Baggage Claim (2013), the film adaptation of playwright David E. Talbert's 2005 novel of the same name.

[35] Scott and long-term boyfriend Lyzel Williams, a graphic artist and DJ, married in 2001 in a private Hawaiian ceremony during a vacation.

[38] On June 20, 2008, at a concert in Carnegie Hall in New York City, Scott shared a long on-stage kiss with her drummer, Li'l John Roberts; the couple then told the audience that they were engaged.

In 2003, Scott established the Blues Babe Foundation, a program founded to help young minority students pay for university expenses.

[42] In Spring 2003, the Blues Babe Foundation made a donation of more than $60,000 to the graduating class of the Creative Arts School in Camden.

She criticized the content for being "dirty, inappropriate, inadequate, unhealthy, and polluted" urging the listening audience to "demand more" when selecting music.