WILLOW

In the space of a decade, WILLOW forged a decidedly idiosyncratic path through music, growing from child star into a mature artist with an immeasurably wide range of influences. Born Willow Smith in Los Angeles in 2000, the daughter of power couple Will and Jada Pinkett Smith began her acting career at age seven in her father’s post-apocalyptic blockbuster I Am Legend and leapt into the pop world three years later with the joyously defiant viral sensation “Whip My Hair.” After releasing a series of hip-hop singles like the bubbly “21st Century Girl” and the percussive Nicki Minaj team-up “Fireball”, her 2015 debut LP, Ardipithecus, showed her more introspective side with its lo-fi electronic production, unconventional melodies and lyrics that examined nature, consciousness, and love. She then broadened her musical palette with 2017’s The 1st and 2019’s WILLOW, experimenting with electro-funk, glitchy Quiet Storm, and dream pop while showing off her vocal power on the woozy “Time Machine” and the psychedelia-tinged “Female Energy, Pt. 2”. In 2020, she continued striking out into new directions with the abrasive debut by THE ANXIETY, her rock duo with her creative partner Tyler Cole, and “Surrender (Krishna Keshava)”, a meditative track with British mantra singer Jahnavi Harrison that’s sung in Sanskrit. It’s impossible to predict where WILLOW’s creative energies will lead her next, but one thing’s for certain: She’s an incredibly intriguing artist in her own right, defined by neither genre nor parentage.