King of Tokyo, Self-Appointed
Will Smith’s son keeps showing up in Tokyo, and at this point it’s less a surprise than a running feature. Jaden Smith posts videos from Harajuku, Shibuya, Akihabara—the full tour, as if he’s been handed a map of everything I care about and is systematically photographing it. He created Neo Yokio, a Netflix anime series so aggressively terrible it achieves a kind of accidental surrealism. And now he’s released Goku: a song and video that is exactly what it sounds like, which is Jaden standing in the middle of Tokyo acting out Dragon Ball Kamehameha poses while a crew films him and digital energy blasts are added in post.
Musically, Goku lands somewhere between early Kanye and a bowl of Fruit Loops, which isn’t entirely an insult. There’s a lightness to the production, and Jaden’s conviction carries it further than it has any right to go. He wants to be taken seriously as an artist—not Will Smith’s kid, not a punchline—and you can feel that want in everything he does. Whether he’s there yet is a separate question. He mistakes his pseudo-profound internal monologue for poetry, his sincerity curdles at the edges into something that invites mockery, and he doesn’t seem to notice or care either way. Being raised with that kind of wealth produces a specific insulation from consequence, and Jaden wears it like a second skin.
As a fellow Japan obsessive, his Tokyo fixation is the most relatable part of his whole persona. He looks at Akihabara the way I do—like someone who grew up consuming the cultural output of that city and still can’t quite believe he’s standing in it. That’s something real, even if everything built on top of it is questionable. Maybe Neo Yokio becomes watchable someday under the right conditions. I haven’t found the correct chemical configuration yet, but I remain open to the experiment—ideally while feeling as one with the universe as Jaden clearly does at all times.