This fresh pop prince is no longer in his father’s shadow
Jaden Smith
Forum, London NW5
In front of a full-throated crowd, Jaden Smith (son of celebrity Hollywood couple Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith) confessed that he struggled with singing about feelings and “being a mosh pit”. This reflected the yin and yang of Syre, his 2017 debut album dealing with coming of age in the shadow of a superstar, and Erys, his wild, egotistical, second-album mirror-image. It might have felt like the stuff of an LA therapy circle, but the contrast actually suggests that Smith might have what it takes to be the next megastar offspring to make it on their own creative merits.
For every Jeff Buckley or Rufus Wainwright there are a dozen James Mccartneys; the trick is to have a relatively underappreciated parent and a distinct, unique talent and character all your own. Smith fails on the first count but more than makes up for it on the second. Since he swapped acting for rapping full-time in 2013
– his father’s career in reverse, you might say – his rebellious nature, love of a good conspiracy theory and rampant imagination have made him a fascinating hip-hop prospect.
Where once he compared himself to Plato and Galileo and discussed time travel, aliens and the Illuminati, now he bases his rap career around a grand, immersive conceit: the protagonist of 2017’s myth-scattered, 70-minute rap musical Syre was a troubled kid
chasing the sunset until it turned round and chased him back, while on this year’s 80-minute follow-up Erys, the character was resurrected as a snarling rap renegade, taking over a post-apocalyptic LA with a pink mind-control drug called Vision.
A cinematic mindset and eyecatching showmanship is perhaps embedded in his DNA. But if the Forum show intended to trace any such narrative, it was muddled. Recalling the stark stage designs of his heroes Kanye West and Frank Ocean, Smith bounded through dry ice on a stage drenched in neon pink, with a huge screen playing out striking but random scenes: Smith convulsing in an ambulance, turning into a laser-shooting superhero for the melodic rave of GOKU, roaming Hollywood as a white-suited Batman or vomiting his way around a Wild (Wild?) West town on corrupted soul track Fallen.
Instead the set cohered around the warm infusion of LA sunset tones and his irrepressible energy, charisma and versatility. When he wasn’t delivering agile rhymes, he was transforming himself into an autotuned loverman on Ninety and B, playing the sullen Eminem foil to guest vocalist Harry Hudson on E, teasing a downbeat Latino riff on slurred ballad Someone Else or going full emo on Fire Dep.
The night’s shrillest screams were reserved for Again and Icon, both breathless bravado rap anthems. But the real revelations came with the pounding electropop of On My Own and the infectious, glossy hooks of Summertime In Paris, brimming with mainstream promise. Behind Erys’s renegade exterior lurks a newer, fresher pop prince.