Sitting at my desk on a frosty January mid-morning, I scoured through Spotify for new music. My repertoire of carefully crafted playlists had grown steadily over the past few months, and I was constantly searching for a fresh sound. I stumbled across a song entitled “Wait A Minute!”, which seemed promising enough.

The moment the song began, I absolutely lost it. The artist had one of the most beautiful voices I had ever heard, second only to Nils Bech, Norwegian king of falsetto. I digress. The head-bobbing rhythm and carefully crafted lyrics led me straight to the artist’s page, and a simple six letter name appeared before me. “Willow”. Interesting… I had only heard of “21st-Century-Girl Willow”, but the vibe of this song was completely different–surely not the same as the lyrical disaster of “I whip my hair back and forth” that had been stuck in my head for the entirety of 2010.

I scrolled through her discography and–to my complete surprise–realized that it was in fact THE notorious Willow Smith. I concluded that she had been enlightened and that the new wave of alternative R&B music she had produced sounded astronomically better than the tragic debut single that had sparked her music career.

However, the fact that my way of discovering her was just happenstance can’t help but make me feel that she is immensely underappreciated.  When people ask what I’ve been listening to lately and I reply with “uhh… Willow Smith?” I can usually see the confusion on their faces. I try to save myself by replying something along the lines of “trust me, her new music is TOTALLY different than what you would expect,” but, to my dismay, people usually think that I’m joking. I’m just saying… if people could just take the time to rediscover her, they would thank me later.