Willow Smith Says “Musicianship Is Going to Become the Next Clout” Ahead of ‘Empathogen’ Deluxe Release
Willow Smith is releasing a deluxe version of her latest album Empathogen, but she’s surprisingly casual about the three new songs and accompanying visuals that will be available Friday.
“I’m just excited for the homies to watch me be crazy, because I love doing that,” Smith tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I love being crazy for other people’s enjoyment.”
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What may seem crazy to others is unparalleled commitment on the part of Smith who reveals while working on the original album, “I pretty much locked myself in my house for six months and only practiced music for hours and hours a day.”
The dedication to refining her technical skills as a musician paid off. Her sixth album, released on May 3 and featuring collaborations with Jon Batiste and St. Vincent, hit the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Albums chart and was bolstered by an NPR Tiny Desk concert, where she performed the album’s lead singles, “Symptom of Life” and “Big Feelings.”
Empathogen, Smith’s first release through Three Six Zero and Gamma after leaving Roc Nation, is also her first to chart in the jazz category, having been seen primarily as an alternative R&B and rock artist throughout her career — classifications she has no interest in when it comes to her discography.
“I want to shy away from genre-specific descriptions of my music in the future because good music is just good music,” says Smith. “All I want to do for the rest of my life is get better at my technical ability and my honesty and my spiritual connection, just deepen that. And whatever kind of music comes from that isn’t as important as the space that it’s being created from.”
In an interview, the 23-year-old talks about her postponed tour with Childish Gambino, whether she’d hop on a Beyoncé rock album and debunking the fear that she would never top 2011’s “Whip My Hair.”
What spawned the creation of a deluxe version of Empathogen?
The original version, I felt like people really reacted to that and I felt like it was a cathartic experience for people and I wanted to expand on that and just put more love out into the world. There were a few songs that I didn’t use for the original, so I thought this would be a really great opportunity to put those songs out.
Was ending the original album with “Big Feelings” foreshadowing that you had more you wanted to express musically?
The reason why I put “Big Feelings” as the last song was because I wanted to end on a really complicated, grandiose note. And I wanted people to, in a way, expect more music, not just for this album, but in general for the rest of my career, that honors the complexity and grandiosity of that song.
Talk about each of the new tracks.
First we’ll start with “Layers.” I put out a single called “Alone” right before I put out Empathogen. “Layers” was recorded with my really good friend Eddie Benjamin at Electric Lady Studios in New York City while “Alone” was also in the works. And then “To You” was recorded way after the album was done with my other really good friend, Antonio Atsuya, in Malibu. And then “Wanted,” I had the beautiful opportunity to get Kamasi Washington on this song. “Wanted” was actually recorded way before I ever started thinking about making Empathogen. And that song was also recorded with my really good friend Eddie Benjamin at Conway Studios in Los Angeles. Kamasi Washington actually got on the song almost a year after the song was recorded and he just elevated the whole arrangement. Kamasi Washington is a beast on the sax.
You’ve talked about just getting to a place of feeling comfortable collaborating with others, what have the experiences been like for you now that you’ve done it a bit more?
I felt like I needed to work on my technical abilities a little bit more to be able to relax in the studio with any kind of artist and just feel at ease. Before I made Empathogen, I pretty much locked myself in my house for six months and only practiced music for hours and hours a day. I ended up doing a crazy college course on intervallic structure and harmony. So I really put the pedal to the metal. And those really intense six months made it possible for me to feel comfortable in sessions with any kind of musician. Before that, I don’t think I had that confidence.
There are theories that Beyoncé’s Act III could be a rock album, and in the midst of that fan discourse, your name has come up as a must-have on the project. Would you answer that call if it came?
If Queen Bey hits me up, you know I’m coming. That’s really the only stipulation. Queen Bey could be like, “Hey, could you pick up some chips from the store and bring it over? I’m in Milan,” and I’d be like, “I’m in L.A., but guess what? I’ll be there in a few hours. “What kind of chips?” So honestly, yeah, I hope.
When I first heard Empathogen, it reminded me of when I first listened to Solange’s A Seat at the Table, in the sense of a woman singing about the things no one says out loud, but we all feel. What space were you in emotionally when you were working on this album?
Coming off of Coping Mechanism, which was a very dark time for me, I felt like I was in a position where in my mind, in my heart, I was like, “OK, you did a lot of suffering, you did a lot of woe is me, you did a lot of screaming, you did a lot of blaming and being angry — so now’s the time to take a seat, sit down and figure out how can you actually heal these wounds instead of just acting out because of them.” So Empathogen was really a journey for me figuring out how do you do the work? How do you heal? I think that’s a deep question for all of us. We throw around self-love and mindfulness and presence and all of these words like it’s willy-nilly, but we don’t really understand what it takes. We don’t really understand what it takes to evolve from the inside out and to change the beliefs that keep you down. That was really the heart of where Empathogen’s songs come from.
Did you come to any answers?
That’s the album. The process of me trying to figure out what it takes. When baby turtles hatch, they have to walk down the whole beach in order to get to the ocean and the seagulls and all the birds they’re on the prowl, they’re looking to eat, the cycle of life is cycling. So there’s a lyric in “Symptom of Life” that goes, “Life is fragile, like a turtle in sand making way to the ocean, almost meeting the end because the birds are in motion.” Every song is an exploration of this beautiful, tragic world that we live in and how do we come to terms — not even how to come to terms, because I don’t think that’s really the goal. I think it’s about grace and compassion and acceptance and being able to see the world for its beauty and its ugliness and accept it all and love it all. We’re so obsessed with answers, I’m not sure if those exist, but love exists.
What was it about the genre of jazz then that you specifically connected to while working through those ideas?
It’s so interesting. While making Coping Mechanism, I listened to so much metal. And people might not realize this if you don’t dive into metal or dive into jazz on their own, but a lot of metal guitarists, because of the intricate melodies that they’re playing and the velocity at which it’s being played, if you slow it down and you listen to the notes that are being played, it’s dissonant and syncopated like a jazz song would be, like a scat solo from Ella Fitzgerald or something. So when you really, really get down to the building blocks of what this music contains and you strip away stylistic things, you see a lot of similarities between metal and jazz. And even the drumming, the crazy poly rhythms in metal songs, and then the syncopated poly rhythms in jazz songs, in prog jazz music, there’s a lot of connections, so that’s one side of it.
But there was one specific moment that really pushed me down this road. I was with a really good friend in Napa Valley, and we were just chilling, watching the sunset, and my homie put on Chet Baker. And I had never heard Chet Baker before, but we just sat there in silence, watching the sunset, and I was almost brought to tears by the beauty of his voice, the beauty of his trumpet playing, the beauty of the progression, and my heart immediately knew, this is what we’re gonna do next. Obviously, the album doesn’t sound like Chet Baker, which is amazing, and I didn’t want it to sound like Chet Baker, but the spirit and the emotion that he brought to the mic was the real inspiration.
Listening your passion and your devotion to technical skills, what is it like for you being in this larger industry where not everyone makes that same commitment and those who do aren’t always as lauded?
I have a hunch. Musicianship is going to become the new clout. Like, the more talented you are, the more that you work on your technical ability, but also your honesty — it’s the technical ability mixed with the vulnerability that really makes the shit go up. And I have a hunch that that’s going to become the thing that the youth craves very shortly. Because we’ve been doing another thing for a very long time. And the young people want soul food. They want shit that matters. And that’s not necessarily what we’re giving them all the time. So when more people start to realize, like, “Oh shit, the lineage is actually dedication. The lineage is actually caring about this shit,” then I feel like people are going to come back and be like, “OK, we’ve been known this, but I guess we forgot a little.”
Perhaps your album’s success is evidence of that. What did it mean to see Empathogen hit No. 1 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Albums chart?
Man, ever since “Whip My Hair,” I was always afraid that everything that I did after that was going to pale in comparison. And I’ve just completely debunked that fear. I’ve debunked that fear multiple times, but this just really makes me go, “Damn, like, you’re an adult.” Stop being worried about the past and just keep killing it and keep being honest more and more.
The Childish Gambino tour with Donald Glover is postponed due to his health concerns. Is there any word on when shows might resume?
I’m just like, “Captain oh captain, get healthy because whenever you’re healthy we’re about to hit it,” you know what I’m saying? We’re about to go hard for the people.
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