Willow Smith’s New Video Whips Haters Into Submission

The single “F Q-C #7” from the young Princess of Bel Air is good enough to quiet critics.

Lest we forget, Willow Smith had a huge dance—“I Whip My Hair Back and Forth”—at an age (9) when most other fourth-graders are whipping naught but bed-wetting. Now, the wizened fourteen year-old is back with another single, “F Q-C #7,” whose title at first glance appears to be an otherworldly chord symbol (we will not die without having asked Willow what pitch a “Q” is), but is in fact an abbreviation of “Frequency Number 7,” which hints at the Smith children’s precocious preoccupation with mysticism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcvjHpDMNoI

While Willow’s first hit was very young Rihanna (in both vocal stylings, beat, and mention of haters), “F Q-C #7” is a sonically mature mélange of indie-rock stars like Hiatus Kaiyote and Tune-Yards that stills pays service to Willow’s age (the lyrics deal with climbing trees, missing class, and checking out a crush’s Instagram). The youngest Pinkett-Smith wrote the song and co-directed the video, and while an explicitly-existentialist 14 year-old child-of-celebrities is an easy target, we think she has the talent to back the talk.