Rise to Fame
The pivot from Will Smith's kid to an actual musician took about a decade and one spectacularly flopped sci-fi movie. He debuted alongside his father in The Pursuit of Happyness at 8, then headlined The Karate Kid remake on his own in 2010. After After Earth cratered in 2013, he walked away from Hollywood and spent years releasing music. His 2017 debut album Syre went gold and peaked at No. 24 on the Billboard 200, which was the moment he stopped being a Hollywood kid.
In the Spotlight
Christian Louboutin named him their first Men's Creative Director in 2025, with his debut collection set for Fashion Week in January 2026. That's an institutional endorsement, not a brand deal. His 2024 album dropped after a three-year silence to solid reviews. He's also executive producing and voicing an anime film rooted in Congolese folklore, partnered with GKIDS and Viola Davis's production company. At 27, he's running more lanes simultaneously than most people twice his age, and none of them are coasting on a famous last name.
Side Notes
In 2015, he co-founded JUST Water, a plant-based bottled water company that hit a $100 million valuation four years in. He kept his family name off the marketing for years to prove the product could sell on its own. When Flint, Michigan, faced its water crisis, he didn't just send donations. He brought a mobile filtration unit that provided nearly 40,000 gallons of free clean water to residents. He also opened a free vegan food truck for the homeless as a birthday present to himself in 2019. The philosophical Twitter phase was real, but the environmental work turned out to be realer.