A bit greater than three years in the past, we may’ve by no means imagined Will Smith gettin’ jiggy wit it once more.
In any case, he had way back given up his profession as a lighthearted rapper and had grow to be a critical thespian who was the frontrunner to win an Oscar in 2022 — on his third nomination — for “King Richard.”
However in fact, everyone knows what occurred subsequent. Smith trashed a whole profession that had been main as much as that second — from sitcom star (“The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”) to box-office boss (“Men in Black”) to acclaimed actor (“The Pursuit of Happyness”) — when he shockingly slapped Oscar presenter Chris Rock shortly earlier than successful a kind of bald dangerous boys.
Now he was the dangerous boy.
Virtually three years to the day after the slap heard around the globe went down on March 27, 2022, Smith is trying essentially the most inconceivable of comebacks by going again to his roots in music with “Based on a True Story,” his first album since 2005’s “Lost and Found.”
He addresses all of the drama instantly within the opening “Int. Barbershop — Day” with a number of voices, together with DJ Jazzy Jeff, comic B. Simone and Smith himself, gossiping about him.
“Will Smith is canceled,” opens one voice earlier than one other counters, “Oh you can’t cancel no icon.”
Playfully however pointedly, the monitor continues to not shrink back from Oscargate: “I heard he won the Oscar but he had to give it back/ And you know they only made him do that s–t because he’s Black.” (Though, opposite to those lyrics, Smith acquired to maintain his Oscar.)
And it even goes as far as to reference his notorious phrases defending Jada Pinkett Smith, warning that “You better keep his wife’s name out of your mouth.”
Then, seemingly focusing on Rock, he channels the brash, hungry younger man who got here out of the streets of Philadelphia by trash-talking on “You Lookin’ at Me?”: “You decided to instigate it/And now you got me, I’m motivated/ITake a beat, I’m spittin’ heat, I’m on fire, incinerated/I’m way too calculated for me to ever get dominated/If I was you and I saw me, I’d see why you’d be aggravated.”
Smith continues to spit: “Took a lot, I’m back on top/ Y’all gon’ have to get acclimated/ Won’t stop, my s— still hot/ Even though I won’t get nominated/Personal life with my wife/Mind your business, it’s complicated.”
However “Based on a True Story” is extra in regards to the religious reflection of a person who’s wanting inward — and upward: Tracks such because the rumbling “Rave in the Wasteland” blur the strains between rap and gospel. There are even three sermons titled “The Reverend.”
On “You Can Make It,” he sounds extra just like the Recent Preacher when he raps, “The darker the hell you gotta endure/The brighter the heaven you get to enjoy/The harder the fall, the higher you soar/God opens a window when the devil closes the door.”
And the uplifting spirit of overcoming adversity has its moments, significantly on the soulful spotlight “Hard Times (Smile),” that includes Teyana Taylor.
However after 20 years, was this the comeback that anybody was ready for? About as a lot as a sequel to “Wild Wild West.”
And after “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” proved that he may nonetheless ship a success film final June, it feels unnecessarily determined — and tone-deaf when “he can fit your whole house in his pool.”
Will in his feels simply isn’t what the world wants or needs proper now.
Even on the top of his music profession — each with DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Recent Prince hits corresponding to “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and “Summertime” in addition to solo smashes on the order of “Men in Black” and “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” — Smith wasn’t precisely rap royalty.
Sure, he gained 4 Grammys — together with the very first gramophone for Finest Rap Efficiency for “Parents Just Don’t Understand” in 1989 — however that was again when voters merely went for the secure, corny alternative of his pop-rap bops.
So this shocking swerve again to music at a time when Smith maybe feels shunned by the film world — he resigned from the Academy and may’t return to the Oscars till 2032 — is, nicely, unusual.
At 56, he’s the Not-So-Recent Prince in a younger man’s recreation that has challenged even the best of rappers to remain related in center age.
Even 55-year-old Jay-Z — who Smith references because the bar for all rappers (“One classic album, what that make him? Jay-Z?/ Jay-Z plus movies and TV”) — hasn’t launched a solo album since 2017.
However Smith turned to Jay — in addition to hip-hop’s present main man, Kendrick Lamar — earlier than making his return to the rap world that put him on the map.
“Before I started, you know, I made two phone calls,” Smith advised SiriusXM’s Shade 45 on Thursday. “I talked to Jay and I talked to Kendrick, and I was like, ‘Hey, I want to get back in music.’ And it was like, ‘What’s the advice?’ And Jay said like, ‘Don’t fake your story.’ He was like, ‘You gotta say what’s true for you.’”
“And he says, “You’ll be looking at the younger rappers, and you want that to be true for you, but you don’t live like that.” It was like, ‘Be true to your story. Tell your story.’ And that’s the place I acquired the ‘Based on a True Story’ from Jay.’ ”
Lamar put it extra bluntly: “Man, just say that s—t you always been f—king scared to say.”
Now Smith is changing the novelty of his previous hits with the fact of a person who’s looking for redemption — and trying to find internal peace.
Smith’s return to the music scene started in earnest when he made a visitor look throughout J Balvin’s set at Coachella final April to carry out “Men in Black.”
That was adopted by one other efficiency on the BET Awards final June, when he debuted the gospel-charged “You Can Make It.”
Then — neglect the Oscars — he led the Quincy Jones tribute on the Grammys earlier this month.
Smith acquired the freshest of co-signs from the most well liked new rapper of the second — Doechii — when she appeared with him and his “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” co-star Tatyana Ali in a TikTok video re-creating a traditional dance scene from the sitcom.
And, in an try to take it again to the streets that gave beginning to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Recent Prince, he acquired some love from his hometown this week when an precise avenue in West Philadelphia was named Will Smith Approach.
However Smith gave up the hood for Hollywood a very long time in the past. And you’ll’t all the time go house, homie.
