A smooth melodic forefront is met with clean but haunting bass strings that mischievously shadow an evasive drum pattern begging for us to come closer. The melodies are soft and decadent; in contrast, the groove is jagged but efficiently stylized for the minimalist mix. In the center of everything is Jimmy D. Scott’s croon, tying all the pieces together to make “Enough is Enough,” the all-new single and music video he’s just released this year.
“Enough is Enough” gets rolling on a half-somber note before climaxing in a fever-pitch jam led by a searing tone, and though the voyage to its highest peak is beset with lyrical melancholy, to say that it’s well worth the trip is no small understatement. Jimmy D. Scott has been stirring the pot with this single, and to me, he straight up crosses into uncharted waters and finds the pinnacle of a unique sonic profile in this heartfelt piece. Listeners with a penchant for blue-collar funk would be wise to pick this track up, as it offers a treasured listening experience not limited to its poetic prowess alone.
Scott’s video for the single doesn’t just explain the narrative of the song through a display of its words verse by verse; it details the emotionality of the lyrics through shots that are always as potent as the words are, all the while never fragmenting the music that’s playing in the background. Jimmy D. Scott is all about detail, as anyone who has ever studied this material closely knows, and even with this relatively simple video, he manages to put a spin on it that makes it feel just as enamoring as a Hollywood-quality, major-label piece.
“Enough is Enough” is incredibly articulate on the surface and, to be fair, doesn’t require much context for us to understand what its composer was trying to communicate to us, but in the same breath, creating this video wasn’t an act of overindulgence in the slightest. Not many artists bolstered by FM airplay are as dedicated to their medium as Scott, and that’s a big part of the reason why I think his sound is as attractive right now as it irrefutably is.
“Enough is Enough” is the latest car in a runaway train of hits for the neo-funk underground that doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon, and though it doesn’t outweigh anything else that you’ll find on the college dial at the moment, it represents the sound of this player exquisitely well. Scott is doing some amazing stuff in the studio here, but I’m eager to hear his latest set on stage. Songs like “Enough is Enough” were designed to be showstoppers, bringing the entire house down in a singular wallop of catharsis, and missing out on an opportunity to see it in action would be a dreadful injustice for any music disciple. 2023 is in full motion, and there’s no denying that Jimmy D. Scott is offering one of its most appealing storytellers with a piece as intriguing and provocative as this.
