Jaden Smith loves going to the movies alone. He visits the same theater regularly and knows every employee there. “Every single one of them,” he says, on a virtual call from Los Angeles. “And when they hire new people, I’m like, ‘Oh, you’re new. I’ve never seen you before.” He also likes to watch the same films over and over again. Repetition provides familiarity and predictability, which brings comfort. “I need that because sometimes my life gets a little bit hectic…”
When your parents are among the most famous celebrities in the world, that’s understandable.
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Alone, in the darkened theater, Jaden gets the solitude he needs. There, movies inspire him to create his own worlds and characters in his music. Take his 2019 sophomore studio album, Erys, which features a multitude of music genres colliding into each other to tell the story of a young man named Erys who rises to power in a dystopian version of L.A. It’s a sequel of sorts to his first album, 2017’s Syre, which tells a much different story, one about loneliness, insecurities, and pain. Then there’s his third studio album CTV3: Cool Tape Vol. 3, released in 2020, a prequel to Syre. These are Jaden’s own music-movies, if you will.
But his next musical project, 2024: A Case Study of the Long Term Effects of Young Love, is different. The EP, releasing on October 18, will include four tracks, including his two singles, “Roses” and “D.U.M.B.,” which are available to stream now. But, as he tells me, a visual component will also accompany his music; a multimedia release of thoughts and emotions.
It’s been three years since Jaden released “Bye,” the single off his 2021 CTV3: Day Tripper’s Edition, a 19-track expansion of his 2020 album. Since then, he’s been reflecting a lot on his life.
Jaden’s been hinting at his new music hot and heavy on Instagram over the past week. On October 1, he released a YouTube teaser announcing the new project. “Hey…yeah, sorry I missed your call. I’m just excavating some shit,” he says in the 41-second video as he walks by a colorful art installation in the desert, the words, “Love is universal” painted across it.
“Excavating some shit” is one way to describe the emotional journey Jaden’s been on. “You know, really what inspired this was just being sad and being alone, because that’s where my music kind of comes from, and those are the places where I can feel the most focus,” he tells me. “… I’ve always thought of 2024: A Case Study of the Long Term Effects of Young Love… those groups of words together, and I always thought that it sounded good. And I always thought that’s kind of what my vibe was and what my artistry was about, that it kind of was a case study of young love and all of my mistakes and my successes and my trials and tribulations; kind of being open source material for people to be able to look at or study or try to understand in their own way.”
But Jaden’s new EP isn’t just about his own personal struggles. The way he sees it, he imagines psychologists in the future listening to this album, using it as a, well, case study, to learn about how social media has changed the way young people think, how they feel, and how they interact with each other. “This is the story of what I would offer up for that group of scientists to be able to study on me,” he says. “I feel like it’s music and visuals and a collection of different writings that I’ve been releasing. That’s really what the project is all about.”
At 26, Jaden—the son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith—strikes me as a uniquely introspective man who proudly expresses his emotions, even if sometimes to a debilitating degree. It’s refreshing to see how honest he is about his struggles and how he operates.
“I feel like a big part of me, you know, being an artist, is about being overly emotional, and I’ve always been overly emotional and sensitive,” he says. “And I think that helps me when it comes to making music, and it helps me to connect to my fan base and my audience of people that may also feel that way…feeling like, ‘Oh, this is the end of the world,’ and just kind of freaking out and being in this anxious space and allowing that anxiety to be amplified by social media and allowing that to be amplified by everyone being able to know what everyone is doing. There comes a feeling sometimes where it’s like you kind of want to hide away from the world and not let anyone know what you’re doing. And then there’s the times where it’s like, ‘Hey, you know what? Screw it. Let’s just be open and honest about this and let’s talk about it if you really want to talk about it.”
Jaden mentions a theory proposed by a British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar called Dunbar’s number. Here’s how it goes: Our brains can only handle 150 meaningful human relationships at one time. After that, communications break down and our social group collapses. He worries that because social media allows us to have hundreds and thousands, and in Jaden’s case, millions of connections, it’s preventing young people from having meaningful relationships.
“Everybody has a Dunbar number…but now social media is into play with that, where you can really feel like you know somebody who’s on the other side of the world…,” he says. “You can talk to them, you can FaceTime them, you can know them better than people that are right next to you…and this is just one of the many, many things that have come onto people today who are using social media, who are also trying to be in love, who also have developing minds, who are also trying to develop what it means to be in a relationship or what it means to relate with other people. And it just brings different levels of complications… so things are changing on the internal landscape of people and their brains and the chemistry in their brains are changing, you know? I’m experiencing that and I’m putting it into the music because I really feel like this is a time capsule. This [2024: A Case Study of the Long Term Effects of Young Love] is a snapshot in time of the mental landscape of a young man today in the world.”
The songs on his soon-to-be-released EP are older pieces Jaden wrote three or four years ago. But he says they feel relevant now, which is why he chose to release them. Despite the age of the songs, he feels like this “mini-project,” along with the videos—the visual trail crumbs you’ve no doubt seen on social media over the past few weeks—are more mature than his previous work. He says that his prior albums have been rooted in storylines that span 17 songs, with self-imposed boundaries placed around sound design and the specifics he felt he needed to create what was in his head. “I feel like on this one I’m more free to be open and to express without the parameters of the movie script, without the parameters of the world building.”
The kind of introspection Jaden challenges himself with—his vulnerability—breeds an emotional humbleness that allows him to take on other projects besides music and acting; ones with more of a social-justice slant.
Since 2015, Jaden’s been busy with his beverage brand JUST Water, along with 501cThree, a nonprofit organization that addresses climate change and resource limitations in minority communities.
Inspired by spending time in L.A.’s Skid Row while making his Erys album, Jaden opened the I LOVE YOU vegan food truck in 2019 with help from Samsung. The mobile restaurant serves free meals to the downtown neighborhood’s homeless population. “I was on Skid Row all the time, just shooting content…and I’m just thinking like, here I am, Jaden, feeling like I can do a bunch of different cool things…and I’m like, I really want to give back to the community in a way that can inspire the youth to also give back and to create beautiful things.”
MSFTSrep, the sustainable luxury clothing brand he co-founded in 2011, is about to release its next New Balance shoe, MSFTS 0.01, though Jaden can’t disclose an exact date yet. “We just did a MSFTS meetup in Paris…for the pre-release of the shoes for our community,” he says, “I’m really focused right now on just building community around my music, around MSFTS, and really getting in front of people and talking to them and hearing people out, connecting myself directly with the fans.”
So, what has Jaden learned throughout making 2024: A Case Study of the Long Term Effects of Young Love?
“The thing that I figured out was like, dude, being by yourself is really important,” he tells me. “Being alone is really, really important for growth as a human, because it’s easy to get attached to people around you—their ideas, their goals, their opinions, you know?
“And sometimes you really have to sit by yourself for a little bit to understand what you really think when no one’s around.”
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