Hi, everyone. Ohthony Mantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd, and it is time for a review of this new album from Willow Smith, petal rock black.

Willow Smith is a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, obviously a member of the famous Smith family. I feel like Willow's existence and popularity no longer needs explanation at this point, especially since petal rock black is far from her first rodeo in music. I mean, not only are we talking about somebody who entered into the pop field with a massive hit as a young artist, but at this point, Willow has also dropped over half a dozen albums now, exploring various alternative strains of music, be it either pop punk and emo, alternative RnB.

But as of late, what seems to have been preoccupying Willow artistically is this fusion of piano-driven singer-songwriter music, art pop, jazz, progressive soul too, all of these sounds and more came together on the last record she dropped a few years ago, Empathogen, which, while a short, scant project, was easily the best album she had dropped so far, and overall felt like Willow was planting the seeds for something much larger down the road.

Honestly, I never foresaw myself being this excited for the potential musical output of a Smith, especially given how consistently disappointing her brother Jaden's output has been. And Will Smith's latest record is just laughably godawful.

However, petal rock black is nowhere near the, I don't know, the growth in potential that I hoped it would be. This album is not really Willow upping the ante in any way whatsoever. I mean, maybe on the collab front with inclusions from artists like Tune-Yards as well as Kamasi Washington. I suppose you could argue that Willow and her collaborators do a better job of conjuring tracks that are a bit more layered, dense with vocal harmonies and jazzy embellishments here and there.

However, that does not take away from the fact that as far as the songwriting goes, as far as the broad musical structures across the 12 tracks on this album go, petal rock black feels far more of an underdeveloped project than Empathogen by a mile. Not to mention its tracklist contains maybe the worst Prince cover I have ever heard in my entire life. If I never hear this version of "I Would Die 4 You" again, I will die a happy man.

Thankfully, the rest of the tracks on this album are far more listenable. But much of the time, the song ideas that Willow comes together with on this project either feel extremely derivative of indie pop trends that were popular and were getting highly rated Pitchfork reviews over a decade ago, or the songs just don't really sound all that finished.

I mean, most of this album just sounds like Willow dicking around in the studio, either finding a loop or a phrase that she happens to be drawn toward vocally or on the piano or with the drums, letting that play out, adding more ideas to it progressively, and then allowing whatever momentum is being built up to drop off entirely, just end it out of nowhere the moment that things are sounding like they're about to overstay their welcome. You might actually have to formulate a change or some progression, something that might actually turn these random one-off ideas into genuine songs. That's the issue.

As good as some of the vocal harmony phrases on this record sound, as cool and well-informed as some of the jazz touches on this LP come across, for sure, Willow continues to display herself as a musician who has taste. Again, which is part of why I liked Empathogen, which is part of why I was excited for what Willow would be doing next.

However, despite the fact that it is clear that Willow is being put onto some truly good shit and that is manifesting in her work pretty well, she's not putting interesting or definitive spins on much of any of it, nor is she developing her songwriting chops all that much by allowing these tracks to just dissipate into the ether before they've reached fruition. I mean, it's telling that one of the most complete songs on the entire LP is the one featuring Tune-Yards, and it just pretty much sounds like a Tune-Yards song.

Plus, the longer this album went on, the more rancid the vibes became, frankly. I felt like I was listening to the musical musings of an overpaid yoga instructor whose energy is so off-putting and tense and judgmental, there's no possible way I could relax in her presence.

But yeah, unfortunately, while I do think there are some cool sounds and ideas going into Willow's work on this project, the end result, sadly, is just paper-thin, much more paper-thin than Empathogen was, which is why I'm feeling a strong 4 to a 5 on this thing.

Anthony Fantano, Willow Smith. Forever.