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Happy Friday, everyone from NPR music and all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton. I'm here with Christina Lee. Hey, Christina. Hey, Robin.

It's new music Friday and we're doing a quick rundown of the best albums out now on July 16th, starting with Willow.

I'm doing what I do and it's called lately I feel everything.

I'm a Jesus Jesus. I know we go. No room to make sure I bought that power. Hey people are just talking flour. Hey, hey, hey, just give me a little more.

I never thought I'd come out of a Willow song saying rock and roll. Here we are. Here we are. Willow is the artist. The record is called lately.

I feel everything. The song we're hearing is the closing cut called breakout. Willow also known as Willow Smith, daughter Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith and Christina for people who remember her when she was just nine years old and released her debut song with my hair. She's 20 now. And this is not that.

Right. Willow and I have a lot in common in that we've had our R&B phase. You know, we've had our 90s singer songwriter phase where we're into Tracy Chapman and maybe a little bit of Fiona Apple here and there.

But now she's into what I was into coming out of high school, which was paramour and my chemical romance and it really, really shows.

So 90s I've read that she was inspired to go in this direction and part because of her mom. Right. So in 2002, Jada Pinkett fronted a new metal band called Wicked Wisdom. So music runs in the family.

But also in particular, what was really inspiring Willow was that at that time as she's watching her mom literally rock out, she would also see her mom receive death threats literally just for

fronting a band and a genre considered quote unquote white. And so this music is definitely its artistry, but it's also activism for her because she wants to show like other black women.

Hey, we need to reclaim the genre that began as ours. And I even hear that like from fuck you, which is I believe the second track where I was like, oh, man, this is her channeling x-ray specs.

And this is even before I realized that polystyrene was half Somalian. So there's some notable features on the record too, like cherry glazer, there's Travis Barker.

And Tierra, why it appears on a song called extra I want to play just a little bit of that.

And she just sounds so good in this mix. It's really crazy because the arrangements are such a throwback. But I think in the lyrics in particular, there's definitely some of that Gen Z sensibility, you know, I think coming out of with my hair willow and jaden both like her brother.

And I think that was supposed to be somewhat of a disc, but either way, they're like, how are these teams so much wiser beyond their years because their lyrics sort of channeled almost self help books really seem to have been descended from some other astral plane.

But so it's really interesting to hear these arrangements that are associated with angst and anger, but really the music ends up being about soul searching. And so that's how I think you get somebody like Tierra Wack in the mix.

That's how you get someone like cherry glazer in the mix. And that's how you get the resurgence of a Travis Barker and Avril Lavigne, who's also featured on this album.

Willow is the artist. Her new one is called lately. I feel everything. And Christina, you'll be back in the second half of the show to talk about the new cakes to kill a record out today.

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