Willow Smith is Connecting the Dots

Photography Myles Loftin

Styled by Jason Bolden

Mere days before the world went into lockdown, Willow Smith locked herself inside a 20-foot box at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art for 24 straight hours. She did so in the name of performance art, inviting guests to silently watch through a glass pane as she and her frequent musical collaborator, Tyler Cole, cycled through what they described as the “eight stages of anxiety.” For many, the COVID-19 pandemic will be remembered as a time when our collective mental health was shaken. But for the youngest child and only daughter of actors Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, the unheralded period of chaos that defined 2020 will stand out as the crucial time when she finally learned how to properly manage many aspects of her own anxieties.

Smith’s MoCA installation coincided with the release of an album with Cole, titled The Anxiety, and, like that 10-song effort, found the pair working through their respective histories with the disorder. The 20-year-old singer intended for the exhibition to raise awareness about anxiety; still, she had no idea how personally cathartic the experience would prove to be. Just over a year later, she reflects now on the day-long experience as “emotional turmoil.” The extended time in “the box,” as the face of Onitsuka Tiger describes it, forced her to confront some uncomfortable truths and emotions. But where she might have once been able to distract herself with any number of other diversions, the then-worsening pandemic—and the worldwide quarantine it mandated—left the newly-minted performance artist alone to wrestle with everything head-on.

Smith, typically a producer of experimental R&B and singer-songwriter-indebted pop, had experimented with rock-adjacent sounds before (most prominently on The Anxiety, but also on earlier tracks, like “Human Leech,” from her 2017 album The 1st), but for a long time, she was fearful of fully stepping into this new arena, despite her longtime reverence for the genre and the culture surrounding it.

At least part of this fear stemmed from what she thought was a limit to her vocal range. After spending over a decade comfortably crooning over sultry production, the shift in genre would force Smith to expand her vocal palette. On “Transparent Soul,” the lead single from her new project, for example, Smith gives into pop-punk’s token bratty speed-shouting in the song’s verses but blends that with soaring vocals in the title-referencing chorus. The singer personally reached out to Barker to ask him to contribute percussion, which he does on several of the album’s tracks. And when combined with her own skillful guitar-shredding, the propulsive emo energy of Blink’s best work shines through.

Coincidentally, the other aspect of Smith’s insecurity was also key to her eventual inspiration. From the ages of 4 to 10, Smith accompanied her mom on tour—around the same time she became a box office sensation thanks to The Matrix, Jada was the frontwoman for nu-metal band Wicked Wisdom. Such were some of the younger Smith’s first musical experiences, and predictably, watching her mom keep crowd after crowd entertained had a profound impact on the impressionable child. Also influential were some of the unsavory facets that affect Black women in the rock realm. “My mom got so much hate,” she admits. “It was intense racism and sexism, just packed on to the tens. People giving her death threats, throwing glass at her onstage. Some crazy stuff went down when she was touring with her band.”

“I got to see that hate firsthand,” she continues. “It was so scary to me, and I think I internalized a little bit.” But as she worked through her anxiety in other parts of her life, the singer also found that she could shed some of the insecurities she had about her music, too. “Every time I feel that coming on, I just go back to my memories of my mom and how she would deal with actual physical danger—she just rose above it,” she adds. “Obviously, she was scared. But she really showed me what ‘womaning up’ really was, by taking a stance and not being afraid of other people’s judgements and perceptions. I really wanted to just go within that place in myself and try something new, regardless of what my insecurities were.”

Similarly, Smith feels a certain strength with her work with Onitsuka Tiger, specifically being a Black woman serving as as the fashion brand’s global ambassador. She describes the popular sports shoe as “some futuristic, but also utilitarian-type shit,” and admits to identifying with the Japanese brand’s history of going “full slay mode, full savage mode.” Then, there’s the fact that Bruce Lee, a hero of Smith’s, wore Onitsuka Tiger. “He was one of the most savage MFs I’ve ever seen,” she jests. “I need to be on some Bruce Lee-type shit!”

On the topic of heroes, Smith lights up when asked about getting the chance to work with one of her childhood idols on the upcoming album—on a song called “Grow,” which features pop-punk fixture Avril Lavigne. The song finds the two singers trading verses about the never-ending pursuit for self-actualization over throwback Barker drums and zippy guitars that easily recall some of Lavigne’s biggest hits. Smith wanted the single to be a juxtaposition between the “super angsty” energy of most pop-punk tracks and the “more evolved spiritual concept” that she had been exploring lyrically. The idea to recruit Lavigne came naturally, particularly since Smith figured that the singer, who famously signed a multi-million dollar recording contract when she was only 16, would be able to relate to many of the song’s themes. As she explains, “I feel like our journeys of just figuring out who we are while being in the spotlight so young [had many similarities].”

Of course, being in the spotlight hasn’t been all bad. In recent years, Smith has become accustomed to sharing intimate details about her personal life in a very public way thanks to Red Table Talk, the Facebook Watch talk show she hosts alongside her mother and grandmother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris. It’s there where she first opened up about her sexuality, coming out as both queer and polyamorous in 2019. And after speaking more freely about her interest in ethical non-monogamy in an episode from April 2021, the talk show’s resident Gen Z surrogate promises to have these discussions in even more detail on the upcoming album.

“It would be only right for my music to reflect my mental and emotional state at this time,” she responds about the topic. “I’ve really never been the type to talk a whole lot about romance or my sexuality in my music, but on this album, it definitely comes out a lot more.” Naturally, she credits her work at the Red Table with pushing her to feel more comfortable to “bring [these conversations] into my own [musical] space.” But she also thinks this kind of lyrical rawness is key to the ethos of her new sound. “It’s rock-and- roll, man!” she exclaims. “It just feels so good to feel like I have no secrets. I’m a transparent soul!”

In the months following her performance-art exhibit at MoCA, as Smith learned to manage her anxiety, experimented with new sounds, and eventually wrote her new record in its entirety, the young artist was sure to keep up with her daily spiritual practices—especially yoga, which she’s been learning to treat as more of a lifestyle choice than a physical fitness exercise. At first glance, the quiet and peace usually associated with these mindfulness practices may seem at direct odds with the louder, brasher, and altogether more intense energy of the music she also recorded during this time. But for Willow Smith, the different energies all work together to create something truly harmonious and beautiful—just like the three different goddesses, Kuan Yin, Saraswati, and Kali, she now has emblemized onto her left arm.