The daughter of actor-musicians Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith - known by the mononym WILLOW - became a famous singer in her own right at 9 years old with the 2010 girl-power pop anthem "
Whip My Hair." As a teenager, she took control of her creative vision by co-writing all of the songs on her debut album,
Ardipithecus, featuring the fan-favorite neo-soul single "
Wait A Minute!"
Around the time she released her debut single, "Whip My Hair," Willow became the youngest artist ever signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation label. She was supposed to start work on her first album after her tour, but the child star began struggling under the weight of her newfound success and retreated from the spotlight for a few years until she re-emerged as a teenager ready to make music her own way. She stayed with the company through 2022's Coping Mechanism and signed with Gamma, where her brother, Jaden, also was on the roster.
Willow seemed to find her niche as an alternative R&B artist but each album found her experimenting with other genres. She took a big risk by abandoning R&B entirely on her fourth album,
Lately I Feel Everything (2021), in favor of alt-rock and nu metal, with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker sitting in on the punk-flavored "
Transparent Soul." It paid off when the album went to #10 on the US Rock Albums chart. But her success in the rock realm didn't curb her desire to experiment. After leaving Roc Nation, her next set of albums,
Empathogen (2024) and
Petal Rock Black (2026), incorporated jazz and progressive pop.
In the middle of her Whip My Hair Tour, the 11-year-old singer was exhausted and ready to go home despite her dad's protests that she must fulfill her contract. As an act of rebellion, she shaved her head, giving her no hair to whip.
Before her musical hiatus, Willow was slated to star in a remake of the musical Annie but told her dad (one of the film's producers, along with Pinkett Smith and Jay-Z) that she'd rather be a regular 12-year-old instead. Annie was released in 2014 with Quvenzhané Wallis replacing Willow in the lead role. Willow was no stranger to the big screen. She made her film debut alongside Smith in the 2007 movie I Am Legend, playing his daughter.
It's not surprising that Willow was tapped to be a musical guest on Saturday Night Live in 2022, having just released her fifth album, Coping Mechanism, to favorable reviews. What is surprising is that she beat her dad to the punch. Despite his decades in the entertainment industry as a rapper and actor, Will Smith never appeared on SNL in any capacity before his daughter took the stage.
Like any famous child of famous parents, Willow was tagged with the nepo baby label.
In a 2024 Allure interview, the singer didn't deny the privilege her lineage afforded her but insisted her identity wasn't wrapped up in her parents' fame.
"I truly believe that my spirit is a strong spirit and that, even if my parents weren't who they were, I would still be a weirdo and a crazy thinker," she said. In fact, she continued, their reputations in the industry only pushed her to work harder to prove herself.
Willow often explores spirituality in her music through the lens of her Hindu beliefs. In 2020 she teamed up with British musician Jahnavi Harrison, who's known for her Hindu mantra meditation music, on the devotional EP Rise, featuring the single "Surrender (Krishna Keshava)." Willow also recorded her own spiritual album, The Thread, in 2026.
Willow co-wrote the 2024 historical fantasy novel Black Shield Maiden with Los Angeles screenwriter Jess Hendel. The tale of an enslaved Ghanaian warrior who is thrust into the harsh world of Viking Age Scandinavia drew criticism for its depiction of Muslims and Amazighs. The latter, an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa, were portrayed in the novel's promotional excerpt as savage thieves and slavers. The controversy led to an intense backlash that called for Willow's cancellation on Twitter, and a two-year delay in the book's release. By the time the novel dropped, the scandal had died down and Willow was back to focusing on her music.
Willow's first exposure to the rock scene was tagging along with Jada's nu-metal band Wicked Wisdom, who toured with Ozzfest in 2002. At 3 years old, she witnessed her mom being harassed by hostile crowds of racist and misogynist men, but Jada's perseverance stuck with her and gave her the courage to pursue the genre years later.
"She would just act like no one said a goddamn thing, and that's activism," Willow
told Billboard in 2022. "She never let that sh-t faze her."
In 2019, Willow came out as bisexual. On the Red Table Talk, a web-based talk show she hosted with her mother and maternal grandmother, the singer revealed, "I love men and women equally." The episode also featured a discussion about polyamorous relationships, with the 18-year-old singer showing support for the idea.
Willow used to resist working with other artists because she didn't want anyone to distort her ideas. Then she realized the best art comes from collaboration. "You grow up and you realize it's actually a really beautiful experience to [watch] the seed of my idea brought to life by this person paying attention and nurturing the idea," she told
Allure of teaming with artists like St. Vincent and Jon Batiste on her
Empathogen album in 2024.
Willow has also been professionally linked to Nicki Minaj ("
Fireball"), Machine Gun Kelly ("
Emo Girl"), Yungblud ("
Memories"), Camila Cabello ("
Psychofreak"), and Avril Lavigne w/Travis Barker ("Grow").
