Willow Smith

A Child Performer Finds Her Voice

Willow Camille Reign Smith was born in Los Angeles on October 31, 2000. At six, she stepped onto a movie set and made her film debut in I Am Legend in 2007. She also acted in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl in 2008. At nine, she recorded the energetic song Whip My Hair.

Released in 2010, the song brought Willow a huge audience while she was still in elementary school. Its playful message about confidence made her one of the decade’s most recognizable young performers. Music soon became her main creative path.

Growing Beyond a First Hit

A famous first song could have defined Willow’s career, but she kept experimenting. Her debut album, Ardipithecus, arrived in 2015, followed by The 1st in 2017 and the self-titled Willow in 2019. Across those records, she moved away from straightforward pop and explored soul, folk, electronic sounds, and rock.

In 2020, Willow and musician Tyler Cole released a collaborative album as the duo the Anxiety. Their song “Meet Me at Our Spot” reached an even wider audience the next year. The project showed how working with another musician could lead her toward a band-centered sound.

Turning Up the Guitars

Willow made another sharp turn in 2021 with lately I feel EVERYTHING. The album mixed pop-punk, alternative rock, and metal influences, with drums and electric guitars pushed to the front. Rather than treating rock as a costume, she studied its history and highlighted the place of Black women in that history.

Her 2022 album, Coping Mechanism, continued with heavier guitar music. These songs often deal with complicated emotions and are intended for older listeners, but the larger lesson is kid-friendly: an artist can learn from many traditions without staying inside one category. Willow’s changing sound also required practice as a singer, guitarist, and songwriter.

Jazz, Grammy Nominations, and New Experiments

In 2024, Willow released empathogen, blending jazz-influenced rhythms, intricate vocals, and piano. She performed its songs with a small band for NPR Music’s Tiny Desk. The album and “b i g f e e l i n g s” earned her first two Grammy nominations at the 2025 awards. In 2026, she wrote, performed, and produced the experimental petal rock black.

That album featured musicians including George Clinton and Kamasi Washington. On July 24, Willow released The Thread, her second album of 2026. Her wider contribution is a career built around curiosity: each new project treats music as a skill to deepen, not a label to protect.