After teasing her Twitter followers for the last week with the date December 11, Willow Smith surprised them and us all by dropping her debut album, Ardipithecus, on that very day. How Beyoncé of her.
This album, which follows the release of last year's 3 EP, is a combination of Erykah Badu and FKA Twigs, mixed with a dash of Dead Petz Miley Cyrus spirit and a whole lot of Kendrick Lamar's social awareness for good measure.
The 15-year-old daughter of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith gets political, spiritual, philosophical, and celestial on the 15-track record named for human's earliest ancestor. It also declares her own evolution as an artist — Revolt reported that she wrote and produced a majority of the album. "Whip My Hair" this definitely ain't, which isn't a bad thing.
On opening track "Organization & Classification," Smith releases some feminist angst against anyone who calls women whores — "It's just because we do just what we want and don't look back once" — before praising the importance of spiritual truth. With "dRuGz" Smith reboots the story of Red Riding Hood, which now includes way more talk of crystals, fractals, and teepees, laying down the line, "My hugs are warm / But my words are colder" like someone you wouldn't dare mess with.
Listen to Smith's entire debut below.
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