Willow Smith's Rock Revival Interview and Valentino Fashion Story in V Magazine

American singer, rapper, actor, dancer and songwriter Willow Smith is interviewed by Dania Curvy, digital editor at V Magazine and VMAN about forging the path for Black women in punk rock. Willow is styled by Nicola Formichetti in Valentino’s Roman Palazzo Collection and Cartier’s emblematic hardware.

Photographed by Domen / Van de Velde [IG], the multi-hyphenate creative blasts through the “lazy stereotype that associates Black female singers with R&B and soul”, making it clear that Black women intend to stay strong in a punk rock music genre dominated by white men.

V Magazine is quick to remind us that Smith’s mother Jada Pinkett Smith was the lead singer in a punk rock band Wicked Wisdom. Smith introduced Willow to Tennessee-based metal band Straight Line Stitch, led by a Black woman, Alexis Brown, now Alexis White.

Willow Smith was “super young’ age when ‘Whip My Hair’, her debut single released by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation came out in 2010. "I feel like I lost my sanity at one point," Smith said in 2018 of the time surrounding her song's release. "I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this gray area of 'Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?' "

In the 2018 interview words of Willow’s father Will Smith: “Willow was really the first person during 'Whip My Hair' that decided she didn’t want to do what I said . . . Because she was the baby girl, she really had the most power over me. As a man – if your daughter says no, there’s really nothing you can do.”

AOC says tell that to authoritarian right-wingers. Read Willow Smith’s entire new digital cover interview “Willow’s Rock Revival” at V Magazine.