JAGUAR WRIGHT
Philly singer declares her newfound independence

Philadelphia soulstress Jaguar Wright is the real deal. Her adopted stage name (real name: Jacquelyn) suggests something feline and strong, and she is certainly that. The jaguar is also a creature with claws, and Ms. Wright sure has those, sharpened and ready to go.

In this era of artists given media training to come up with banal answers for soft-lobbed interview queries, she is refreshingly blunt, candid and controversial. In the course of her freewheeling recent WORD interview, Jaguar compared herself to Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, as well as dissing the likes of Alicia Keys, celebrity culture and the immaturity of the U.S..

Jaguar has just released her second album, Divorcing Neo 2 Marry Soul, and it has been receiving rave reviews. Deservedly so, as its songs feature the honest passion of classic soul, while retaining a sound that still seems contemporary. The title may sound clumsy, but Wright makes it clear it reflects her disdain for the whole marketing side of the “neo-soul movement.”

She’d been lumped into that scene with her 2002 debut album, Denial, Delusions & Decisions, plus her collaborative work with The Roots. Her album’s hit “The What Ifs” was featured in Coca-Cola’s “Nu-soul” advertising campaign with The Roots, while her backing vocals on Jay-Z’s MTV Unplugged appearance also spread the word on her singing talent. Her record sold an impressive quarter-million copies, but her label, Geffen, was unhappy with the direction she was taking on her second album.

Jaguar fought to regain control of 10 new songs, signed a record deal with the independent label Artemis, then completed Divorcing on her own terms. This makes the warm reaction to the disc especially gratifying. “I could have said ‘OK, I’ll just leave this here and start afresh,’ but then I thought ‘who will hear these songs? This is good work, we can make a good goulash from this.’ Those songs were the foundation for the record, and the response has shown I’m on the right track.”

The album can be viewed as Wright’s declaration of independence, given that it has been completed without any of the big names with whom she has previously been linked. Jaguar agrees wholeheartedly with the observation “My album title truly speaks for itself for so many facets of my life. I’m divorcing myself from the stigma of just being a great guest performer or background singer. That’s why I didn’t do a bunch of cameos or duets for this album. I wanted it to be about me and my work, for people to know that Jaguar Wright is more than Jay Z or my work with The Roots or Femi Kuti. I’m more than a great live performer with another artist you know a little more.”

She really heats up on the topic of ‘neo-soul.’ “That term is such a cliché and it is so disrespectful to the consumer. You are saying this is new soul? There is nothing new about soul! Soul music will be around forever as it is the truest form of human emotion in popular music, the closest thing to that spiritual connection. For me to tell you it is new is a lie! That is to deny that I have ever been influenced by all the great artists that have come before. This voice doesn’t belong to me. It came from so many other great voices, it is just a great hand-me-down, a great antique, like my grandmother’s engagement ring.

“With neo-soul, it’s like they’ve found a new way to say ‘new nigger music.’ It is so disrespectful. The people who benefited from that thing weren’t soul artists. Usher, Alicia Keys, Faith Evans, these are all pop artists. Alicia Keys is the biggest misconception in soul there is. She’s a pop singer, and she is the perfect product for the marketing people. Her music is so non-threatening, and I won’t agree she is a musical genius. Genius is when you can take an idea that has never been addressed, or take an idea and bring new life to it. It is where you take a stance somewhere and write a song that changes someone’s life. It is when you write epiphany music.”

Wright believes she is closing in on writing such a song. “I think I have stumbled across the idea. It will be about human loss, when we lose people that we love and what that actually feels like. I have to write this song. It needs to be in every jukebox in every bar all over the world so when you leave the funeral or the wake or the memorial service, you can get a scotch and hear someone sing exactly how you feel at that moment.”

Jaguar has a firm belief in her mission as an artist. “I’m an honest songwriter. I write and sing the things most people are afraid to say out loud. I am your survival, I am your honesty, I am your anger, I am your question that you don’t want to ask because you’re afraid of what people might say. Onstage, I tell people ‘I am a servant for you, to serve your mind and your spirit.’ I see myself as creating a place where ideas and feelings, no matter where they come from, can grow and give light and shade.”

Such a mandate is more challenging than dishing up formula r ‘n b fodder, but Wright is up for it. “People say, ‘don’t you find it hard? What you are doing is not the popular choice.’ I go, ‘yes, I am a martyr, but I’m doing pretty good. They crucified Jesus but I’m still here!’ ”

Offstage, Jaguar is a wife and mother, and she is keeping it real. “I still go to the places I used to go, I still shoot pool. When I’m not working I am a regular person. How can you make music for people you can’t relate to, people that aren’t going to those parties and restaurants and don’t have $400,000 cars? I’d think the public would be pissed off at those artists that are just shoving in your face what shit your life is — ‘this is how we live.’ That is so incredibly cruel. I never want to be one of them. Let’s be people!”

By Kerry Doole

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