Interview with Jada Pinket Smith goes Horribly Wrong
Really the whole reason I joined Street was to meet famous people and get with hot guys. So I get my first shot at a famous interview with Jada Picket Smith, actress and front woman in the new aggressive rock band called Wicked Wisdom which was playing a show in Philadelphia and doing the promotion circuit. I researched and prepared for the interview by listening to clips of Wicked Wisdom's heavy metal screaming tracks from their upcoming album. After listening to her music and checking out her pictures, it would be a lie to say that I wasn't intimidated by this seemilying little woman. Don't be decieved, she's a bad ass. I head into the office and anxiously await Jada. Finally I get the long anticipated call. I have my tape recorder, my list of questions to ask and my foot ready to put in my mouth. We start off generally with chit chat about her last show (the location of which I screw up), then comes the first of about a thousand awkward pauses when I just decide to jump into my questions. The very, very first question it all tanks:
Amy: How did you end up in this musical genre? I know that you went to an arts school in Baltimore
Jada: Yes, Baltimore School of the Arts.
Amy: Um, what exactly was, like, your specialty at that school?
Jada: I was in the theater arts program.
Amy: Okay, and actually you were friends with Tupac Shakur?
Jada: Yes
Amy: That's really cool
Jada: Yeah, he was a very, very good friend of mine.
Amy (realizing she is a fucking idiot then making it worse): That's...well...it's...uh...very unfortunate. But, uh so you listed SevenDust as a musical influence...(quick change the topic and bang head against table).
This was the beginning of the end. An interview can never go well when you start it off bringing up someone's dead friend. We managed to go on to talk about her band's musical progression, going from opening for Britney Spears in Europe to playing the second stage of Ozzfest, her marriage to Will Smith, and her favorite Philly Cheesesteak place (which she called Will to check on: It's Overbrook Pizza by the way, and she didn't advise that I go to since I'm so obviously white and it's "in the hood."). All of this, of course, is peppered with my halting interjections such as, "uh hu," "right," or "that's great," and poorly recieved jokes .(aka "So Jada, can you take Will?" answer: "No, he's much bigger than me." Okay cool.) But it didn't get really good again until I asked about their band name which I got wrong not once, but twice out of the four times I said it. Not Wicked Wizards, as Jada corrected me everytime...no that would be a retarded name. Overall, Jada was full of the usual bull you hear from celebrities: wisdom about life, claiming "we all have the power to create our own life," parenting, marriage, and enthusiasm for music. She came up with a good catch phrase to legitimize her mediocre music, "We're doing a sort of soul rock thing," she says in which they hope to infuse more of a melody into the heavy metal sound. Jada writes the rage infused lyrics which draw from life as she sees it. For example, "Something Inside of Me" was in response to the kidnapping and murder of a five year old girl in CA. It's very chipper stuff as you can imagine. Despite all the cheezy typicallities, Jada was really passionate about her music and band, but mostly importantly she put up with my awkward and, at times, down right bad questions while being gentle with me on my first time. We have shared something beautiful and forged a bond that can never be broken, no matter how she tries.
