Remember when Will Smith Where fun Rapper? The extremely loving, uncomplicated Rapper? The weak happy fresh prince behind “Parents just don’t understand”, the great Willie Styling hunger of “Jiggy wit it”, and the sunny seasonal trade from the antemic “Summertime”?
Smith doesn’t. At least not judge from the important rationalizations (or pure excuses, you decide) that drives the complicated hip hop of “based on a true story”, his first new album since 2005.
Many things take down Smith or drive him to endless self -examinations, because he (most implicitly) handles the fall from that angry bang during 2022 Oscars and its immediate effect on his approval rope. Of course, even without this development, Smith could no longer be the older 20-year-old of “He is DJ, I am the rapper”, recorded with Philly Neighbour/Scratcher Jazzy Jeff, or the near 30-year-old who, after playing in a series of movie blockbuster, came back to music to release a swinging, 9-time-plain, ”
What has changed most for Smith in “Based on a True History” is the abandonment of much of his familiar hitmaking aesthetics. Smith’s flow is no longer talking, floating and silver bar; His texts are no longer cozy or directed directly to the heart and head. Instead of worrying with an ease of guiding his spirit (and his spirituality), complicates “based on a true story” things by swallowing in self -psychology and an elitist’s sense of what darkness is for a gazillionaire on songs like “Antrum.”
Where Smith was once pleased to offer charmingly boyish nests, told us without problems Laissez-Faire Life lessons and large sales sites, the existential Musings of “based on a true story” are often dense and sad-and preaches! Smith may have talked to you on all his earliest albums, but he never mounted sermons like his new, holy scrolling “You can manage that,” One of the “true story” singles with Yes Friends, Sunday Service Choir, who hit the top of Billboard’s gospel Airplay diagram last winter.
Intended to portray how he has grown from his previous misunderstand Switch moment.
This does not mean Smith’s “true story” is without its disarming charm. Although it is short, “Int. Barbershop Day”, with Pal Dj Jazzy Jeff, singer B. Simone and a choir by Naysayers, Kör, Old School West Philly-Pop-Hop that doesn’t sound old. Instead, it sounds fun, even though the hubris -filled, because the track makes Sport of Wills very bad in recent years with texts highly announces “Will Smith is interrupted” and “I will never forgive him for the shit he did.”
My bet is that everyone would be forgiven for Smith if he and jazzy made a full album together, again. Even in miniature, their two flavors taste good together. And it starts to look as the case when the rapper takes up DJ again (“Me and Jeff, like Jordan and Scotty”) at the top of the banking “you look to me?” At the same time punched out, but refused to stay down to the Count, a gruff smith makes his actor best to understand, then diss, his public’s view of the bang heard around the world.
“If I were you and I saw me, I would see why you would be aggravated,” he spins with departure. Again, Smith “took a lot”, is now back on top, so “you will need to be adapted.” He knows he is still Oscar’s worst enemy (“won’t stop, my shit is still hot even though I won’t be nominated”) and that you will always be very curious about Mrs. Smith (“Personal life with my wife, think about your business, it’s complicated”). But in the end, Smith will always measure personal growth in Box Office Grosses first weeks-seeing 2024’s hit “Bad Boys: Ride or Die”-Snarer than something psychotherapeutic: “Everything that is important is the fact that I still get compensated.” It’s just simple math and simple melodic hip-hop + as a smartass = message.
It is when he turns from that formula and finds self-help psychic 101 lessons and the 21st century mantra to light up songs like “Auntrum” that Smith goes from elevation to Trite call. “Seeking and questioning, looking for answers,” keeps Smith an inner child who throws a fit, while his “ego continues to keep me ransom” and his “fear controls me randomly.” Oh, and “Life can get ugly, but fuck it, I’m handsome.” If the drug does not heal fast enough, Smith is happy to forgive herself and move on, make a remaining stop at the mirror along the way.
Smith even turns a potentially sensual scene with Temptress Teyana Taylor – In the seductive, jittery tones of “Hard Times (Smile)”, with his sultry Dr. Buzzard’s original Savannah band-test-to something you would hear from an elbow-patched professor who comes on Coyly to a Tiktok Beauty Influencer. The old Big Willie would have bent some muscles, winked a small smile and brought the sexual tension to rise with a subtle wizened Brand of Machismo. Here he offers only a slippery learning moment and a grin. And how do you destroy one of disco -ras slinkiest songs?
Even Smith’s interstitial moments-more ecclesiastical organ-filled “pastes” bitar humor from funk and hip hop’s finest tradition, the humorous gap and fill it with the hot air of “internal wasteland” and “way to be with our obstacles.”
Although the goal of “based on a true story” is linked to a desire to learn from the lessons of life and prove that there is power in positivity (over responsibility), Will Smith’s message about mental health and all -round may sound like only moralizing (and rationalizing) over too many semi -made, overproduced beats. Smith’s pontification could use a little stupid fiction and a little big Willie Swagger – the old type, not the main strut with which he goes through this most tired “true story” with.
