{"id":58325,"date":"2026-02-18T01:15:41","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/18\/willow-performs-petal-rock-black-at-jazzy-blue-note-debut-in-l-a\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T01:15:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:15:41","slug":"willow-performs-petal-rock-black-at-jazzy-blue-note-debut-in-l-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/18\/willow-performs-petal-rock-black-at-jazzy-blue-note-debut-in-l-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Willow Performs \u2018Petal Rock Black\u2019 at Jazzy Blue Note Debut in L.A."},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tFew music artists must contend with the weight of pre-conceived notions as heavy as Willow<\/a> Smith, but watching her perform live, it\u2019s surprisingly easy to forget them all. Her output is intense, but her execution is unencumbered, vulnerable, and joyful. It\u2019s also weird and hungry enough to block out any nepo noise that might still be lingering for those not familiar with her wide-ranging work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCelebrating her new album, petal rock black,<\/a> <\/em>which surprise-dropped on Feb. 16, the singer and musician offered two intimate performances at the Blue Note Jazz Club in Hollywood to showcase the material. It was a packed room for the late set, and Willow (who doesn\u2019t use her last name as an artist) had the crowd enraptured as she played tracks from the artsy jazz-pop opus.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy album is out and it was 100 percent produced by me,\u201d she shared near the end of the set. \u201cIt was my first time ever doing that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 25-year-old is focused on furthering the experimental journey of her last few six recordings, especially 2024\u2019s Grammy-nominated empathogen<\/a>,<\/em> which featured collabs with Jon Batiste and St. Vincent. The new record opens with a spoken word intro from the funk father himself, George Clinton, which somewhat belies its lack of buoyant grooves, but sets the tone for its poetic and often esoteric themes.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe beckoning follows in the form of \u201cVegetation,\u201d a breezy loop-driven bee-bop, which Willow opened with last night, followed by the breathy seduction of \u201cHear Me Out,\u201d an emotive exploration of relationship dynamics \u2014 a recurring theme in her music over the years. Her self-reflections have always landed better than love laments though, and there\u2019s plenty of these on the new one.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tWillow Smith performs at the Blue Note Los Angeles.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRuben Acevedo*<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe daughter of Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, and sister to Jaden Smith, has grown up before our eyes, and she\u2019s obviously struggled to find her place in the business ever since she scored a hit at 10 years-old with the dance floor jam \u201cWhip My Hair.\u201d But being around music \u2014 hip-hop, pop, and even metal (her mom\u2019s rock band Wicked Wisdom) \u2014 has clearly been formative.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tFor anyone who\u2019s intently listened to her various releases and collabs, it was never about proving her talent. Willow\u2019s vocals have always been madly robust, and they\u2019ve brought a haunted resonance to everything she\u2019s worked on, especially her collaborations with Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker (\u201cEmo Girl\u201d), Yungblud (\u201cMemories\u201d), and PinkPantheress (\u201cWhere Are You?\u201d), all of which came out in 2022, a year that also marked challenges for her parents in the public sphere and might have pushed her creative liberation further.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEither way, by the next year, she really grew as a performer and a songwriter. Her 2023 Coachella performance was killer as was her Tiny Desk show <\/a>the following year. She expanded empathogen<\/em> with a deluxe version called ceremonial contrafact, <\/em>which featured revered composer and saxophonist Kamasi Washington. He returns on the hypnotic \u201cPlay,\u201d a standout on petal rock black, <\/em>along with a shimmering collab by Oakland\u2019s Tune-Yards called \u201cOmnipotent.\u201d\u00a0 She refrained from playing the new album\u2019s effects-laden cover of Prince\u2019s \u201cI Would Die 4 U\u201d during the set we saw, but the artist\u2019s influence on her overall is palpable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRuben Acevedo*<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tDressed in a simple black dress with her long braids tied up until she let them down near the show\u2019s end, Willow shared that she was a bit nervous on stage. She spoke of 2025 being a tough year for everyone with \u201csome weird shit going on,\u201d but added that right now, we\u2019re all finding our \u201cspiritual warrior type energy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tShe channeled this on guitar and at the mic without it, crooning some songs soft and breathy, and others bold and ruminant, which brought to mind everyone from Erykah Badu to Tori Amos depending on the piano, drum, and bass arrangement. She shouted out her band and gave them each time to shine (there was even a drum solo), and spoke of the significance of the Blue Note and its opening which she attended last summer.<\/p>\n

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\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard to codify the new release as any one genre, but it\u2019s definitely not a pop or rock record, and that\u2019s by design. Leaning most heavily toward soulful jazz fusion with elements of tribal rhythm, it was perfect for the room. And while it remains to be seen if petal rock black<\/em> will appeal to the Gen Z crowd who\u2019ve made her a star in her own right, she seems unconcerned with mainstream hit potential right now. Yes, she has the luxury to explore new ideas and play with whoever she wants, but she also seems to understand what a blessing that is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFocused on deep personal expression created alone in the studio (as touted in album\u2019s promo trailer<\/a>), her record release performance demonstrated that the best if most challenging part of self discovery is sharing it with others. She also proved that she\u2019s gracious and skilled enough to pull it off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Few music artists must contend with the weight of pre-conceived notions as heavy as Willow Smith, but watching her perform live, it\u2019s surprisingly easy…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":58326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}