Paul Wall Says Jill Scott Encouraged Him to Write Explicit Verse for Their Collab

In an interview for The Art of Dialogue, rapper Paul Wall broke down how Jill Scott encouraged him to write an explicit guest verse about one of her relationships for their collaborative song, “So Gone (What My Mind Says).”

As seen in the clip above, Wall said that Scott reached out to him around 2005 to record something for one of her songs, but ultimately it didn’t work out. They remained friends throughout the years, and eventually she reached out to him years later when she was experiencing writer’s block. When he arrived at the studio, Wall said that she almost seemed hesitant to talk about what she wanted him to help her with, and he was surprised when he figured out what he would be doing on the track.

“In my mind, it’s Jill Scott… somebody who’s got a vocal range out of this world,” he said. “She also isn’t vulgar at all. The earlier Jill Scott, she wasn’t very vulgar at all. … The neo-soul wasn’t vulgar at all. If it was sexual, it was all innuendo. Encoded talk. It wasn’t like, ‘I’mma f**ksyou’ and this and that, all that kind of language. She asked me to get on the song, I’m like, ‘Alright, I’mma do a verse.’ But the verse is very clean. The song isn’t clean.”

He admitted that he was “scared” to be more explicit when he wrote his first version of the verse for the song, which appeared on the 2011 album The Light of the Sun.

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“She was like, ‘Man, you know, your verse is cool, but I want you to be… Oh, I’mma d**kyou down, I’mma pull your hair. I want you to f**ksthe s**tout of me on your verse,'” he recalled. “I’m like, ‘Are you sure?’ I ain’t never heard that language on a Jill Scott song. … The neo-soul community might whoop my ass if I’m on here talking like that. My Mamma might whoop my ass, my Auntie might jump me! My pastor wife might slap the s**tout of me if she hear me talking vulgar on a Jill Scott song.”

He went back and recorded another version of the verse, but she came away thinking that he was still only “getting there,” and that he was being too “sweet” and needed to be more direct. “She kept telling me lines she wanted me to say,” he continued. “Jill Scott wrote my whole verse for the most part! … The last thing she said was, ‘I want you to say… It might sound crazy, but I want you to say, that’s what a diamond chip d**kdo.'”

He said that she later told him that the song was inspired by a real relationship she had been in, which was purely sexual, but she struggled to leave.

Watch the full interview up top.

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