“It’s Love” even starts out smooth, with Jill singing in that way that drew everybody to her in the first place, over some slight keyboard stabs before the drums kick in and the whole song blows up into a straight jam session. It even has the breakdowns that keep you moving. On an album that was already jam packed full of the sound of neo-soul (at the time), this was a party record, clearly inspired and for D.C. but done in a way that if you liked to move and party, it didn’t matter where you were from when it came on. “It’s Love,” is simply, love, in music form. It’s made for the hips, for two-steppers and for anybody who needs to work out some energy on the dance floor.

Jill Scott is an artist who deserves every bouquet of flowers she gets. Her voice, her sound, her poetry, her acting, her joy, her realism, etc. I don’t know if she’s always being 100 percent transparent, but she feels like she is and that is why she still has a career and a presence and is an artists we all still love and revere. And it all starts—for the vast majority of us—with her debut album in July 2000. I’ve been listening to, and loving, “It’s Love” since I first heard it back then, and I imagine I will for as long as I can hear.

It’s love.