WICKED WISDOM Frontwoman: 'I Love Having Freedom With This Music To Just Be Me'

January 21, 2006

WICKED WISDOM frontwoman Jada Pinkett-Smith (actress and wife of actor/rapper Will Smith) recently told The News-Times that the band's self-titled debut, due out Feb. 21 on 100% Woman/Suburban Noize, includes the song "Set Me Free", which is about misogyny in music; and "You Can't Handle This", which appears on the Ozzfest DVD.

The lead single, "Something Inside Of Me", was inspired by the 2002 kidnapping and murder of 5-year-old Samantha Runyon in Stanton, Calif.

"She was found in the woods, just completely ravaged and left there like some kind of rag doll," Pinkett Smith recalled in a Jan. 6 interview from her Los Angeles home. "This was somebody's child. I remember being so broken up about it. I remember having to go to an event that day and being on the red carpet. I had to keep my composure. That wasn't a place that I was supposed to talk about that. It really upset me that we're in a society now that was so desensitized from such traumatic events. We are supposed to go on with our day and act like nothing happened.

"When I heard the track, her face came into my mind," she added. "That rage and that anger and all that hurt came about. I came up with the title 'Something Inside Of Me' — just all of those feelings that were inside of me that I couldn't talk about that day, or I wouldn't talk about. That track gave me a place to express it. This music and the stage gives me a place to talk about all of the things I want to talk about that might not be so P.C. on the red carpet, which is why I love doing this."

Though she wears makeup onscreen and at film premieres, Pinkett Smith doesn't enhance her look for concerts.

"I take my hair out of braids and I put on some clean clothes and I go onstage — and that's it," said Pinkett Smith, who has a stepson, Trey, 13, a son, Jaden, 7, and a daughter, Willow, 5. "It's just raw Jada. I hate when I have to (dress up) for the red carpet and I love having the freedom with this music to just be me, man. These kids, they don't care about what I have on. All they care about is, 'What are you coming with tonight?' That's it. They don't care about all that (other stuff). As long as I'm coming with something that they want to hear and I'm up on that stage making it happen for them, that's all that matters."

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