Willow Smith Brings Her Rumored Beau Tyler Cole to Red Table Talk for the First Time to Discuss Voting
Willow Smith brought on a special guest to this week’s Red Table Talk!
The 19-year-old singer and actress invited her rumored boyfriend Tyler Cole onto the show to discuss voting alongside her mother Jada Pinkett Smith and grandmother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris.
Willow excitedly danced in her chair as her mother introduced the 22-year-old musician as a “close family friend.”
Pinkett Smith added Cole was “extremely passionate about today’s RTT so we had to have him at the table.”
The episode centered on voting and Black America with Ice Cube, Van Jones and NFL star Brandon Marshall as guests.
red table talk/ Facebook Willow Smith and Tyler Cole on Red Table Talk
Cole, who is in the band The Anxiety with Willow, expressed his concern for Black artists in the music industry saying, “I feel like a huge dilemma for us as Black people is that the media and the industry wants to see us in a certain light.”
“In the music industry, you’re taught that oh, if you’re Black and you rap about violence and money that’s going to make you more money,” he said. “Labels are going to want to sign you if you’re talking about violence more so than [something else].”
Cole asked fellow guest Ice Cube how to “break the cycle” the industry attempts to make to which the former N.W.A. rapper said, “It’s complicated.”
RELATED: Willow Smith Says Voting for the First Time Was 'Hands Down the Most Stressful Day': 'I Was Lost'
MEGA Tyler Cole and Willow Smith
“The positive music sometimes gets pushed to the side and the raunchy hardcore stuff gets promoted,” Ice Cube said. “It puts an imprint in other young artists coming up to [think], ‘Oh, this is the way I must need to do it to get on.’ And artists can’t be afraid to show something new.”
He added, “It’s really all about having courage to break the molds when you’re an artist and not letting anyone put you in the box, not even for own community.”
Willow and Cole have kept their rumored romance relatively low-key. The two collaborated together for a 24-hour performance art event at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary in March.
The pair explored the stages of paranoia, rage, sadness and anxiety while inside of a glass box.
