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  • Roc Nation

After debuting with her hit single "Whip My Hair," Willow Smith (daugher of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith) left her music career. Five years later, she emerges with a precocious, fitfully interesting new record that shows growing pains in between bursts of inspiration.

It's been five years since Willow Smith released "Whip My Hair," her undeniably catchy, exuberant debut single. It was light. It was fun. It was a good song. At nine years old, she was the youngest-ever signee to Roc Nation: perhaps not an astonishing fact given who her parents are, but hitting the limelight before middle school can be tough on the psyche no matter how silver your spoon is. Therefore, it was a pleasantly surprising decision when, a few years later, Willow decided to bail on starring in a remake of Annie, canned all follow-ups to her burgeoning music career, and focused on growing up with whatever artistic integrity the world would allow her. Although still in the public eye, giving increasingly mature and existential interviews, and sporadically releasing music online, Willow has now released what amounts to her first official album, Ardipithecus (which is "a genus of an extinct hominine that lived during Late Miocene and Early Pliocene in Afar Depression, Ethiopia," according to Wikipedia, FYI), and the fact that it is such a pointed departure from her earlier musical forays is a surprise to no one.

Nepotism and talent aren't mutually exclusive, but behind all the psychic awakenings and blossoming chakras, something about Ardipithecus remains unbaked. The potential is there, definitely—Willow's complete subversion of R&B/pop tropes (shaved head, age-appropriate sexuality, asymmetrical fashion) is a breath of fresh air, and comes off as totally natural, not the posturing of someone pretending to be cooler than they are. Her vocals are untrained, but not gratingly so, coming off as throaty and confident even when she misses notes. The current alternative R&B landscape is filled with artists who may not be the most powerful vocalists (Frank Ocean, FKA twigs) but more than compensate with lyrical style and production skills. It's clear that this is what Willow aspires to; however, by focusing so heavily on her mystical lyrics and desire to express her worldview, the overall production value takes a backseat. Can the spiritual musings of a high school student, albeit one with above-average life experience, sustain themselves for an entire record? And furthermore, is Willow's persona enough to detract from her somewhat forgivable artistic shortcomings? Even after multiple listens to Ardipithecus, frankly, those questions persist.

Ardipithecus' problems are even down to its track sequencing—by the time the album picks up at "Stars," an uptempo, synth-lead collaboration with frequent musical partner JABS, you're already twelve songs in, many of which aren't complex or structured enough to hold much of your attention. "Why Don't You Cry," the record's lead single, is also its closer, a puzzling decision which, again, seems much too little too late after a full listen. It's a shame, because many of the ideas within Ardipithecus are solid, just shoddily executed. Willow is able to flow from tribal chanting (the fast-paced and shuddering "Natives of the Windy Forest," an early highlight) to more traditional R&B leanings ("IDK," a song that proves that when her lyrics about mortality and spirituality are slightly subdued, the effect can actually be arresting), which is no small feat. But at the same time, Willow has written and produced the whole album pretty much by herself, and it shows. When she sings, on opener "Organization & Classification," "I'm just a teenager/ But I feel angrier than a swarm of hornets," it's a painfully unnecessary statement, because literally no other type of person would follow it up with a song that's unironically called "dRuGz," which includes the line "I'm the heroin inside the syringe/ And I'm not going in/ I'm just the girl."

But if you were Willow Smith, would you care? Her crown as Most Woke Millennial is secure, and her mission of completely abandoning her pop past has definitely been accomplished. In the same way that the leap between ages 10 and 15 is gigantic, so is the leap between 15 and 20, and in another five years, if not sooner, it's absolutely plausible that Willow could deliver the polished, brilliant record she is clearly capable of. It's just that, in between bursts of inspiration, Ardipithecus is largely a record of growing pains.

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