Willow Smith is reflecting on her first brush with fame.
The singer was just 10 years old when her debut single "Whip My Hair" became a mega hit in 2010. However, the following year—after releasing two more songs—she took a break from her budding music career. Now, she's sharing why she needed that hiatus.
"I saw the dark path I could have gone down. I think I kind of caught myself before my coping mechanisms started too early," she revealed on the Oct. 7 episode of Sirius XM's Bevelations. "I knew I needed to be a kid."
When host Bevy Smith asked Willow how she had the strength to tell her dad, Will Smith, that she wanted to take a break at 11-years-old, the singer explained her mindset at the time. "I had touched a sadness that I didn't know existed. And that was terrifying. Because I was like, 'I've never felt this before. I don't know, this is obviously not healthy,'" she said."'I need to stop this before it becomes a darker, a darker place.'"
The 21-year-old added, "And realistically in my young mind, I really didn't know. I just knew it felt wrong. I just knew it. I just knew everything felt wrong."
Willow—who returned to music a few years later, releasing her debut album Ardipithecus in 2015—further noted that people ask her about this time in her life all the time, saying, "I really just think my higher self was like, 'No. This is going to go bad for you.' And I just had to listen."
The "Emo Girl" singer, who hosts the series Red Table Talk with her mother Jada Pinkett Smith and grandmother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, explained how the Facebook Watch series has been an important part of her growing up.
"Being able to sit with my mother and my grandmother and discuss really, really daunting topics—it's beautiful. And it's amazing." she explained. "'And there are moments where, you know, we do butt heads. And I'm like, 'That's okay. We can agree to disagree.'" She continued, "I think that that kind of free flowing allowance of opinion is a really big learning curve for all of us."
She also touched on how the conversations with her mother and grandmother have influenced her perspective on life. "That's what makes life beautiful, is that everyone's different," she added. "We all have different ways of being and thinking and, sometimes that's hard, but that's the journey of life."
Willow's latest album, Coping Mechanism, was released on Oct. 7.