Willow Smith is officially a Grammy Award nominee! The 24-year-old singer-songwriter earned her first ever nod for the golden gramophone when the nominations for the 2025 Grammys were announced earlier this month.
For her acclaimed jazz-rock album Empathogen, which earned rave reviews for her experimental sound and sultry vocals, the musician earned two nominations.
The first went to the album’s production team for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, while she is the sole credited nominee for the second, Best Arrangement, Instrumental, and Vocals, for one of the album’s singles “Big Feelings.”
Weeks after the nominations were announced, Willow took to her social media page with a compilation of some of the reviews for her record alongside her two nods, and simply captioned her post with: “GRATITUDE.” Her fans enthusiastically celebrated her major career moment.
The “Whip My Hair” singer has been in the music business for over a decade, releasing her aforementioned debut single in 2010. However, as she has embraced new directions with her music, so too have the recognitions for hardware come rolling in.
Willow is the third member of her illustrious family to be nominated for a Grammy, following her dad Will Smith and her older brother Jaden Smith.
Will, 56, has been nominated eight times over the course of his career, with his first dating back to 1989. He has won four Grammys, for Best Rap Performance in 1989 (“Parents Just Don’t Understand”), Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in 1992 (“Summertime”), and Best Rap Solo Performance in 1998 (“Men In Black”) and 1999 (“Gettin’ Jiggy wit It”).
Jaden, 26, has one Grammy nomination to his name, a nod for Album of the Year in 2022 as a featured artist on his friend Justin Bieber’s album Justice.
RELATED: Will Smith celebrates major family ‘first’ for daughter Willow Smith
All three family members continue to actively release music, with Will dropping a pair of comeback singles earlier this year, ending a seven-year hiatus from music, and Jaden releasing his four-song project 2024: A Case Study of the Long Term Effects of Young Love last month.
Recently, during a conversation with fellow musician and friend St. Vincent for Interview Magazine, Willow spoke about the catharsis she felt making this album and her musical process.
MORE: Willow Smith opens up about her childhood with famous family in personal new video
“I think as artists, we both know how difficult it can be to step into that evolved version of ourselves, but we keep stepping into versions that are slightly and slightly closer to our core truth,” she told Vincent.
© Getty Images“Now I’m at the point where I see the work that I put in, and I just can’t wait to put more work in. I definitely have been in positions in my life where I’m like, ‘Damn, my vision is so much greater than my capabilities.'”
MORE: Willow Smith is glowing as she celebrates ‘most rewarding’ milestone: ‘More to come’
“And I feel like now my capabilities are kind of catching up to my vision, which feels so good.”
© Getty ImagesShe added: “We’re kind of taught to question ourselves, and because I have so much respect for so many other artists, sometimes that turns into questioning myself. But when you put the work in and your heart and mind is in the right place, you can’t lose.”
Read the full article here
