WILLOW, or Willow Smith, is Will Smith’s daughter. Since “The Slap” incident at this year’s Academy Awards, even Koreans have only been talking about the most sensational aspects of the family’s history, and WILLOW seems to have been sucked in as a result as well. There is no avoiding that the most public things about her would be connected to her family. Even her debut is the role as her father’s character’s daughter in the 2007 film I Am Legend. She also hosts the talk show Red Table Talk with her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, and grandmother, Adrienne Bandfield-Norris. But WILLOW has spent more time in the public eye for her music. In fact, she has been recognized for her music without relying on her name or any connection to her family for some time now. After years of building up her credibility, her music is becoming more relevant and receiving more attention than ever.

Let’s take a look back at some of her recent achievements. Last July, her album lately I feel EVERYTHING became an unavoidable symbol of the pop punk revival. “Meet Me at Our Spot,” released by WILLOW and musical partner Tyler Cole under the group name THE ANXIETY, reached number 21 on the Hot 100 and number three on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. She also performed on the song “emo girl” from Machine Gun Kelly’s latest album, Mainstream Sellout. The second single of the album, the song went to number 77 on the Hot 100 and number 9 on Rock & Alternative. WILLOW was also featured on Camila Cabello’s album Familia on the track “psychofreak.” Cabello performed on Saturday Night Live on the weekend of the album’s release, singing the song along with “Bam Bam”; WILLOW made her SNL debut performing “psychofreak” with her. Most recently, WILLOW’s song “Wait a Minute!” from 2015 found new popularity on TikTok and now sits at 82 on the Global 200 chart.

WILLOW’s music is constantly evolving. She released her debut single, “Whip My Hair,” in 2010—when she was just nine years old. The song, a mix of R&B and dance, drew comparisons to Rihanna. In 2015, WILLOW released her debut album, Ardipithecus. The album was noted for its use of experimental pop and soul, and while critics praised its ambition, they were less keen on its depth and quality. Her second album, The 1st, came out in 2017. Here, WILLOW forewent her earlier experimental sound and shifted to a more familiar approach centered around the guitar. Reviewers detected traces of Alanis Morissette and Tracy Chapman. With the release of her eponymous album in 2019 and THE ANXIETY’s self-titled album the following year, WILLOW’s music began to be labeled as psychedelic, dream pop and punk. Her move to pop punk in lately I feel EVERYTHING was the result of a conscious decision she made during the pandemic. She got in touch with Travis Barker directly for help on “t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l” and sought out a collaboration with Avril Lavigne for “G R O W” because she wanted to channel the Radio Disney feel of the mid-2000s.

Taken as a whole, WILLOW’s career—from its beginnings and up to the present day—seems to be taking on many of the trends from the late 1990s and early 2000s. It is essentially a microcosm of Generation Z’s detailed journey through pop punk over the preceding years. And her album covers are like a visual snapshot of the whole process. If you are wondering what training to become an R&B singer from age eight, being the youngest artist signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation label and having the ability to do whatever kind of music you want whenever it suits you would look like, you have a perfect answer for that right here in the real world. It allowed WILLOW to call on Cabello, singer of the Latin pop hit “Bam Bam,” when the mood to create a guitar-heavy rock song struck. WILLOW is already heading in a more aggressive nu metal direction, as can be heard with “PURGE.” This is quite interesting, given how her mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, both portrayed the character Niobe in The Matrix series and was the vocalist for the band Wicked Wisdom in the early 2000s, showing an overlap between the two generations when it comes to sharing these repeating, turn-of-the-century tastes. Would it be a step too far to see WILLOW’s next move as a barometer of the way the winds of Gen Z’s tastes are likely to blow?