The Pop Corporation

Day-glo, Looney Toons hip hop, has a special place in everyone’s heart. Only the coldest cynic would fail to break into a huge smile when Skee-Lo’s ‘I Wish’ pumps out of some speakers. That’s where Will Smith lived, with his perennial good time hits like ‘Summertime’, ‘Boom! Shake The Room!’, ‘Miami’ and all.

While rap music has historically been all about the deepest cut for a sample chop, wordplay, frontin’, and street smarts, Will Smith was always the light relief that you could play at a kids birthday or Auntie’s retirement shindig. That’s no bad thing – you see, Will Smith could summon huge outpourings of love in all corners, whether you knew him from his Fresh Prince days, the Men In Black franchise, or generally being a hugely likeable guest on chat shows, busting out dance moves with the hosts, or leading audiences through “Nowwww this is a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down…“

Things got a little sticky for Will in recent years. His absolute car crash of a relationship with Jada, slapping Chris Rock… we didn’t exactly stop loving him, but it all felt so at odds with the international treasure status Will had garnered through the years.

It seems, with a resurgence and reappraisal of the unswerving greatness of Jazzy Jeff, and Eddie Murphy returning to SNL and making decent films again, Will Smith wondered what it’d be like if he were cool again.

So, with some surprise, he announced that he’d be making music again, and taking it on tour to some unlikely places like Scarborough and Wolverhampton. The idea of singing along with Smith to ‘Gettin’ Jiggy With It’, ‘Wild, Wild West’ and more, is a great one. Forget being cool – it’s a wholesome, vibey, good time with Will Smith… and… y’know, he’s not a bad MC all things considered. Easy flow, funny – he’s a darn sight more listenable than a number of his Golden Era peers.

With the news of a new LP – ‘Based On A True Story’ – it was hard not to feel a gooey sense of nostalgia and get your hopes up for some party hip hop, right?

Sadly, the whole LP doesn’t quite land because – and this is the real surprise of the album – it’s all quite worthy and serious. Oddly, Smith has been taking cues from Kanye, and on ‘Rave In The Wasteland’, you can hear the ghost of ‘Black Skinhead’ fighting to get out, albeit, in a much gentler way of course. The Sunday Service Choir appear too, as well as a vaguely College Dropout era beat on ‘Bulletproof’.

Maybe Smith figured that the world would like an album that was The Old Kanye, delivered from someone who wasn’t opening courting fascists with Swastika t-shirts and firing off ableist slurs at Jay Z and Beyonce’s kids – but it certainly feels like a misstep to even remind us of someone who is so bleak and polarising in 2025. See, even for those who can still bring themselves to listen to old Kanye records, they were pretty fun, witty affairs – likewise, Smith’s appeal was always in fun, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

It isn’t all bad of course – Jazzy Jeff appearing on ‘Barbershop’ is a real hoot, but that’s the album opener, so the highlight of the whole piece is gone, and you’re left treading water through some pretty earnest, MOR hip hop.

The most annoying thing, when it boils down to it, is that we really could have done with some honest-to-goodness fun in a time when the world feels so rotten. Smith isn’t a spokesperson for a generation, and nor should he be – what we needed was some super obvious samples, some goofiness, some big slabs of party music, in a time when mindless fun can so often feel missing.

Maybe some confessional, serious music could have been a revelation to those of us who have pigeon-holed Smith into some relatable class prankster, and this could’ve been his ‘Confessions Pt 2’, but it falls short of that too.

We so wanted to enjoy this album, because who doesn’t wish Will Smith well when he sticks his neck out to try and bring some joy in the world? However, we’re left with something that’s neither here nor there, and the feeling of a wasted opportunity. Sure, the live shows are still bound to be a riot when he pulls out the hits, does the running man with his crew, and runs through the fabulous “sometimes, I get n-n-nervous and start to stutter, and I f-fumble every w-w-word I utter“, but come the new material, the audience may need to show some charity to one of the best loved stars of a generation.