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Hello, All Songs, fam.

You just had a piece go up.

People can find it on the NPR site.

It's all about, well, ostensibly, it's a review of two new albums by Jill Scott and Brent Fias,

but really I read it as a complete takedown of the self-help industry.

Yeah, it really, it kind of ends up being that in a way, doesn't it?

I mean, you call them charlatans.

Yeah.

I guess it's because I was thinking, like,

she has been so much a figure of relentless optimism throughout her career. Right. Self-improvement has been such a key cog in the way that her music functions and the way that it sounds.

It's like very sort of like spiritually refreshing in a way.

But also belief in the self, though. Yeah. Yeah. Really investing in becoming the better you.

Yeah. And I was like, man, Jill Scott is like the antithesis of so many of these grifters out here who are

selling a version of you. That is like just, it's specifically designed to make them money.

And it just made me think about that album in conversation with the Brent Fias album, as two artists sort of like try to reckon with what the idea of becoming the better version of you as an artist is.

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