Jada Pinkett Smith finds her hard rock voice

Dec. 2, 2005, 12:21AM
Jada Pinkett Smith finds her hard rock voice


By MICHAEL D. CLARK
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

On screen Jada Pinkett Smith has played a bank robber, a femme fatale and the wife of Muhammad Ali. It wasn't until she entered the Matrix, however, that she decided to be what she really wanted to be.
A hard-rock vocalist.
While shooting The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, the last two installments of the Matrix sci-fi trilogy, Pinkett Smith talked to co-star Keanu Reeves and got a handle on what to expect as she prepared to take her hard-rocking band Wicked Wisdom public.

Reeves had drawn a great deal of publicity, much of it bad, for his work as bass player in the rock band Dogstar.

"I talked to Keanu about it quite a bit," Pinkett Smith says. "He said, 'They (metal fans) will jump all over you because of who you are.'

"But I can take a blow. I'm a soldier."

Pinkett Smith, who goes by the name Jada Koren (her middle name) as the lead growler for Wicked Wisdom, will have her chance to win over Houston headbangers Saturday when the band plays with Powerman 5000 at Scout Bar.

Many will snicker or sneer at the thought of the actress and wife of superstar actor/rapper Will Smith letting her hair down and howling like Rob Zombie or Ozzy Osbourne. When Wicked Wisdom joined the Ozzfest lineup earlier this year, many of the established heavy-rock artists raised a pierced eyebrow. They also figured Wicked Wisdom wouldn't make it through the entire tour.

"On the last day of the tour a lot of the guys fessed up that they figured I would be off the tour in two weeks," Pinkett Smith says. "Both artists and fans came into the tour with their own ideas about who I was as an individual and left saying, 'If she can do that, there's no telling what she can do.' "

Pinkett Smith concedes that her well-financed marriage has afforded her the opportunity to take time away from acting and pursue her dream of performing music live.

"It doesn't hurt to have Will Smith as your husband," she says. "You don't have to worry about paying the bills."

Though she might seem a musical novice on paper, Pinkett Smith attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, where she gained an appreciation for music across the pop-culture spectrum. Unlike her West Philadelphia-raised husband, who was drawn to hip-hop, Pinkett Smith lists classic rockers such as Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Led Zeppelin and Osbourne as her major influences.

The original Wicked Wisdom lineup tried bending Pinkett Smith toward dance-pop R&B like Janet Jackson. Gradually members left, and she and guitarist Pocket, a veteran musician who has played alongside Erykah Badu and Eric Benet, started getting more musically aggressive until the hard-rock sound of the group's self-titled album (in stores Feb. 21) came to fruition.

Pocket says there was a moment during rehearsals when Pinkett Smith locked her mix of growls, midrange throw-downs and hiccupping singing pipes together; he knew immediately Wicked Wisdom had found its voice.

"I stopped her and said, 'That's exactly what I'm looking for. That's your starting point,' " Pocket recalls. "I knew then that we had 'it' and that this was not a one-time shot in the dark."

Pinkett Smith agrees. She knows that numerous actors — Reeves, Russell Crowe, Juliette Lewis — have gotten grief for moonlighting as rock stars. She's adamant, however, that fronting a band like Wicked Wisdom is what she was born to do. She plans to stick with it and win over the naysayers one club at a time.

"You can't enjoy the glory on the other side without having to pay," Pinkett Smith says. "I don't think I've ever had to earn my stripes like I did on Ozzfest. The crowd made me work. They don't (care) about the rah-rah Hollywood (stuff). It's given me a chance to be just Jada and not Jada Pinkett Smith."

michael.d.clark@chron.com