Willow Smith covers the latest issue of L’Officiel, and in the accompanying feature she shares her recollections of growing up the child of movie stars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith.
One of the experiences she remembers was her mother’s stint fronting the rock band Wicked Wisdom in the early 2000s, and the negative reaction she received when the band played Ozzfest.
“My mom got so much hate,” Smith recalled. “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.”
As a young child accompanying her mother on tour, Smith says she “got to see that hate firsthand. It was so scary to me, and I think I internalized a little bit,” noting that whenever her mother found herself in “actual physical danger… she just rose above it. 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.”
Those memories of Wicked Wisdom, she explained, are part of why she’s going in a more pop-punk direction for her upcoming album, Lately I Feel Everything.
“I really wanted to just go within that place in myself and try something new, regardless of what my insecurities were,” she said, revealing the experience is allowing her to fulfil “that desire that I had ever since I was 10 or 12 of singing rock music, of being a Black woman singing rock music.”
