EXTREME: Love it or hate it, Pinkett Smith is in Wicked Wisdom for real. |
It’s a late weeknight and I’m washing dishes in the kitchen when I hear my wife’s voice from down the hall: “Come look at this!” On the tube is a hardcore metal quintet slamming through speed riffs; up front is someone with a head of bushy black hair in baggy jeans and a baggy red sweatshirt singing on a rising melody: “Something inside of me. Is. PISSED!” The band take off on another riff. “Wait until they come back to the chant thing,” Clea says. The chant thing? Don’t they call that rap? But it isn’t. “Strangled. Virtue. Shallow. Holes. Whisper. This. Hate. Within. My. Soul.” One. Word. Per. Bar. Staccato. Not rap flow, a chant. The singer is glaring, snarling, eyes flashing. “He’s really good, isn’t he?” Clea says. “You mean she.” “What? No!” It’s a pint-sized female Zack de la Rocha as far as I’m concerned. The band go through another verse, downshift into reverse-chord-metal mode for the mosh, and now the whole front line are whipping their heads and hair up and down in the four-to-the-bar metal nod. What the fuck! How did this get on Letterman? Yes, they have cool bands on Letterman, alternative bands, even heavy bands. But this is like 2 in the afternoon at the Palladium for the NE Metal Fest. This is the old Bunratty’s on a Tuesday night with the openers for Sam Black Church. All-ages show metal, is-that-my-front-tooth-on-the-floor metal.The singer has her foot up on the monitor, with the classic “Hail Mary” upraised arm of metal. The song ends. Letterman’s chuckling off camera, “Oh my!”; then he’s on screen, hugging the singer. “You’re not kidding around, are you?”
Indeed not, but who were they? Wicked Wisdom, Letterman says.
The next morning I check in at work with the resident metal expert. “No man, guess I’m out of the loop . . . ” Then, checking the Web: “Wait, that’s Jada Pinkett Smith’s band.” No way. I know Jada Pinkett Smith. Wife of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Does movie-junket interviews on Letterman in little mini-dresses and high heels, glossy make-up and straight black hair. A bit giggly-Hollywood. But then there was Collateral. Gravitas. Deep. The woman who made her bones in Menace II Society. That was hip-hop. But not this. Not this get-the-fuck-outta-my-face metal band? No way!
Way. Pinkett Smith, on the phone from LA, laughs when I tell her the story. So, was Letterman in on it?
“Oh yeah, he knew exactly who I was. But I asked him just to mention the band. Because I don’t like to start out with ‘Jada Pinkett Smith’s band Wicked Wisdom.’ It opens people more to the music, like ‘Oh my God, Jada, what is she doing?’ ”
In fact, Wicked Wisdom have played the Palladium zillion-band bills and toured with Ozzfest (at the invitation of Sharon Osbourne, who saw them at the Viper Room), and for the most part — despite an indiscretion where they played the 2004 Britney Spears tour — they’ve kept a low, grassroots profile, Pinkett Smith on the band’s Web site identified only as Jada Koren, her given names. On their homonymous 10-song debut, which was released earlier this year on Suburban Noize, the band pile on the heavy riffs and Pinkett Smith goes from soaring melodic hooks to death-metal Drano growls in songs with an occasional feminist slant (“Set Me Free”) but also generalized themes of injustice and self-determination. (Other titles: “Bleed All over Me,” “Cruel Intentions,” “Reckoning.”)
So, yes, how many ways can she break form: a black woman fronting a metal band who also happens to be a mainstream movie star married to one of the biggest Hollywood stars of any color. And, oh yeah, she’s 35 and has five kids at home when you count Will’s son from his previous marriage, their two kids, a goddaughter, and a nephew. And this Saturday they play Harpers Ferry, of all places — the WAAF pre-Locobazooka party, followed by Locobazooka at the Tweeter Center the next day.
Pinkett Smith says that when she started the band, she wasn’t sure what she was looking for except that it had to be “heavy, melodic, and intense. The band did go in many different directions. Finally we were able to find that launching pad, which is basically the Wicked Wisdom album we have out now.” There have been four incarnations of the band, all in different styles. When she decided to start a band, she put the word out through a friend. She hooked up first with guitarist Pocket Honore, who’d most recently been with Erykah Badu. Each turn of the band retained a new member — bassist Rio, guitarist Cameron “Worm” Graves, and finally drummer Philip “Fish” Fisher of Fishbone.
