Jada Pinkett Smith has long been known as an actress, the wife of Will Smith, and host of the candid online talk show, Red Table Talk. Adding to her laundry list of impressive accomplishments is that Pinkett Smith is also a singer-songwriter. She surprisingly fronted a heavy metal band, Wicked Wisdom, in the mid-2000s, with opportunities ranging from opening for Britney Spears on her 2004 Onyx Hotel Tour to scoring a slot at Ozzfest in 2005.
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“I listened to all kinds of metal as a kid,” the actress told MTV in 2006. “Metallica, Guns N’ Roses. I would always look at Axl Rose and say, ‘Why aren’t there any chicks out there doing this now?’ I always wanted an opportunity to get out there and rock out.” Along the way, Pinkett Smith has written several songs for Wicked Wisdom and even had a cut on one of her estranged husband’s albums (she and Smith separated in 2016). Check out three songs you didn’t know Pinkett Smith wrote.
1. “Afro Angel” by Will Smith
Written by Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Lennie Bennett, Channette Higgins Channoah Higgins, and Bob Dorough
When Will Smith dropped his second album, Willennium, in 1999, he pulled his wife of two years into the creation process. She helped write the deep cut “Afro Angel” which also features her reciting spoken word poetry. Her voice can be heard opening the song as she speaks: Here I stand before you – brown / Color of the mountains / Colossal as the earth / Wrapped so deliciously within my own joy and misery / Feathers of my wings paralyzed by the distance of my mind / Here I stand before you, the color of the night / Frozen by the potential of me / An Afro Angel.
Willennium debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 and has been certified two times platinum for sales north of two million copies.
2. “Bleed All Over Me” by Wicked Wisdom
Written by Jada Pinkett Smith, Pocket Honore, and Cameron Graves
Jada Pinkett Smith wasn’t just the lead singer of Wicked Wisdom (operating under the stage name Jada Koren), she was also one of their principal songwriters. One of the standout tracks from their self-titled sophomore album is “Bleed All Over Me.” The thrashing track shows off Pinkett Smith’s powerful voice as she wails the dark lyrics: Can I touch your suffering / And I love the way you feed my hungers, my hunger, my greed / And I love the way you bleed all over me.
The song got a second life when her daughter and fellow singer, Willow Smith, surprised her with a live performance of the song with her former bandmates Honore and Graves as a Mother’s Day gift in an episode of Red Table Talk in 2021.
3. “Stuck” by Wicked Wisdom
Written by Jada Pinkett Smith, Pocket Honore, and Cameron Graves
After a long hiatus, Wicked Wisdom reunited in 2013 for the song “Stuck.” The dark song arrived during a time when Pinkett Smith’s comments about her marriage to Will Smith were misconstrued, leading many to believe they were in an open marriage, which Pinkett Smith had denied. Some nights I feel the way you touch me / Those nights I believe that you once loved me / Tonight I wish that you could hold me / And now it’s time to end this story / So stuck on yesterday, she proclaims in the chorus.
“To my Facebook fam, this video incorporates a concept we have talked about often on this page. The idea being that when we concentrate on dealing with and cleaning up our own stuff… all things fall in place,” the singer explained in November 2013 when the song was released.
[RELATED: 3 Songs You Didn’t Know Willow Wrote for Other Artists]
Bonus: “Dear Father” by Willow Smith (Unreleased)
In 2018, Pinkett Smith revealed that she and her daughter Willow Smith wrote a song called “Dear Father” that was intended for one of the younger Smith’s albums but was never released. “I actually have a song with Willow that we did together. It’s called ‘Dear Father’ and we are still working on it,” Pinkett Smith told Billboard at the time. “But it’s pretty dope. Willow has always wanted to do some stuff with me. She grew up with Wicked Wisdom on tour so it’s always been her dream to play with the band and play with me on stage. It’s really fun. So we’re thinking about doing four songs or something.”
Photo by The Chosunilbo JNS/Imazins via Getty Images)
