Willow has ensured that her debut solo performance on Saturday Night Live won't be one that's forgotten anytime soon, smashing a guitar through a TV on the set at the end of a two-song performance featuring curious/furious and ur a stranger.
Showcasing her diversity as a performer, Willow delivered a note-perfect rendition of curious/furious, before proving many recent doubters absolutely wrong with a savage rip through ur a stranger that saw the young genre-bender attack the song with all the venom she could muster.
Both songs are lifted from Willow's new full-length, Coping Mechanism. Taking to social media before the show, Willow posted photos of herself and her band with a simple caption reading "It's called historybeingmade.com"
The release of ur a stranger caused Willow to receive some rather unpleasant remarks from metal 'gatekeepers', something that the artist was happy to fire back on in a recent interview with Metal Hammer.
“I think the only reason why it’s older, white men mostly listening to this music is because metal has been gatekept for a long time by these people. [Now,] new people of colour are coming to say that that’s really not the way that it should be. Rock is for everyone [and] I’m gonna bring my people to the space and we are gonna vibe it out like we always do… hopefully the old white dudes vibe it out too.”
In the same interview, Willow revealed that she is a genuine fan of Crowbar, Deftones and Lamb Of God. It was that fandom combined with the example set by her mother Jada Pinkett Smith, who fronted metal-crossover act Wicked Wisdom that inspired Willow to explore the darker side of her musical output.
"The first artist that inspired me was definitely my mom, she was the first rock artist that I ever saw perform up close.”
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