Willow Goes Beyond Her Years In “The 1st”

In November of last year, Willow Smith released her second studio album The 1st at the impressive age of 17.

The 1st quickly followed up her critically acclaimed debut album ARDIPITHECUS, characterized by its experimental beats and galactic inspired vocals.

However, as much as critics were impressed in 2015 with Willow’s ability to produce such an eccentric sound, “The 1st” is an even better display of musical and personal bravery. Willow strips away the fantasy of her of her first album and embraces simple guitar and piano progressions that allow her maturing voice to take the spotlight.

The first track on the album, “Boy,” starts off with a tense violin riff that releases as Willow sings, “Hey Mom, I met a boy/He plays guitar/He likes Quentin Tarantino/And really sad songs.”

Willow is not afraid to address her youth and naiveté and asks for wisdom from her mother and from God about love, fear and sadness. The clarity of her lyrics, unadorned with innuendos and needless metaphors, convey the level of honesty that she brings to the track, imploring the world about her first love.

Lines like, “And I can’t help the thought he thinks I’m boring” and “But I think that I love him/Is that bad?” reflect just some of the unromantic fears and firsts that come with new relationships. There is a frankness to her music that some may be too quick to label simplistic.

“An Awkward Life of an Awkward Girl,” the following track, is just piano and no vocals. Although its unexpectedly early to put a track with no vocals on an album, the track establishes a sense of place, which is far from awkward, that Willow maintains throughout the entire album.

“And Contentment” is a sleepy and whimsical track that lacks some of the clarity she channels in the rest of the album. But the track displays her incredible vocal range, not just in pitch but in style. Willow starts off high, girlish, and soft but then embraces the emotional roughness of her voice as she exclaims, “Babygirl, you got to shed your leaves.”

“Ho’ihi Interlude” starts off with an abrasive radio static as Willow comes in with hypnotic, Om-like humming. The repetitive nature of the song, that starts off with, “I wanna see I wanna see/The energy within in the trees,” follows the fairytale-like use of flutes that makes you feel as if you’ve just been dropped into A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“Lonely Road” sticks out on the album as one of the more produced tracks that even includes back-up vocals. It’s a strong track with heavier beats and seems to indicate where her career could take her in the future. “Lonely Road” proves that Willow’s voice and style is strong enough to support more complexity and collaboration.

If anything else The 1st displays Willow’s maturing career as a singer. She still frequently utilizes the vocal style that fans fell in love with on ARDIPITHECUS, falling into deeper and rougher exclamations when she emotionally sings things like “You are a human leach.” However, she fully embraces a softer and more sultry version of her voice on tracks like “A Reason” and “Warm Honey” where she showcases her wavering falsetto.

“Romance,” the closing track on The 1st is the longest, and arguably the best, track on the album, juggling activism, love, lust, and youthful cynicism in an incredibly cohesive whole.

Willow begins the track with a condemnation of romance, referring to it as a “hoax to trick your mind into thinking perfection exists.” However, over Spanish guitar-picking, Willow addresses sex and lust in direct and self-aware ways. It is unexpected to here someone as young as her to be talking about sex so intimately and honestly and instead of feeling inappropriate, it’s a refreshing and authentic take on how young women perceive lust.

Willow sorrowfully addresses violence and oppression in her last verse, naturally weaving together complex social issues into simple poetic narratives. She closes the song with the verse, “Where we do not kill our brothers/Or rape our sisters/Or enslave any life.”

The 1st is graceful and confrontational and displays a sort of raw eloquence that you can barely believe comes from a girl who the legal system would’t even consider an adult.

But this isn’t a girl’s album. This is music created by a woman for other women. In just 34 minutes, Willow teaches us to never underestimate young people, especially young women. In several instances she acknowledges her age, and her inexperience shines through many times throughout the album, but her honesty and vulnerability conveys a level of self awareness beyond her years. She doesn’t deserve the social condescension packaged into the term “girl.”

It is hard to believe that Willow created “The 1st” only seven years after “Whip My Hair,” Willow’s first debut as a singer, and a track that was silly but incessantly catchy. At just 17, Willow has struck a beautiful balance of vulnerability and defiant strength and tapped into the subjectivity of America’s young women.