Will Smith Interview
Big Rap for Will Power

The following announcement by superstar Will Smith mon't mean much to thousands who qued to see Men In Black II, but its guaranteed to send his oldest fans into ecstacy.
"People are expecting me to come with explosions and all that," says the Hollywood star.
"I'm actually thinking of taking the approach this year of going completely the opposition direction and performing old skool. No dancers. Just Heff (Townes), two turntables and me on stage, to take it back to that. Just to do something different. So we're going to strip it all the way down and go back to me and Jeff."
Long before Will Smith, the Hollywood star, was commanding $35 million a movie, plus 20 percent of the gross in the case of Men In Black II, he and his old mate Townes were winning Grammys as DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince.
In 1989, the pair was awarded the inaugural rap Grammy for the track Parents Just Don't Understand.(Smith now has a total of four Grammys to his credit).\
Some 13 years on , Smith has released 10 albums, selling nearly 30 million copies.
But don't expect a DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince reunion tour (the pair released the last of their albums together, Code Red, in 1993).
"I havent had an opportunity to do as much touring as I'd like," Smith says. "I love being on stage, but it's just a huge production to go out and do a tour. So I'll probably do TV shows and have fun with stuff like that."
Smith spent a chunk of 2002 living in Sydney, looking after his two youngest children - four-year old Jaden and two-year-old Willow (10-year-old Willard Smith III has been at home in LA) - while wife Jada Pinkett-Smith has been busy making two Matrix sequels at once.
Smith has kept it low-key while in Sydney, spending most of his time in the gym preparing for his next film role (Bad Boys II, which starts shooting in Miami on August 1) or having a hit on the golf course.
His few forays into the public-usually with his family on the weekends-have been pleasantly uneventful, rarely disrupted by star-struck fans.
"People generally keep space, people respect the distance here," Smith says. "People will point- I can see people recognising - but for the most part people don't approach, especially if I'm with my kids."
"America tends to be a vacuum. You don't even tend to realise there's a rest of the world out there when you're in New York or Los Angeles. So getting out into the world is hugely important for Americans."
Smith's stay here was regularly disrupted by quick trips back home, be it for the Academy Awards or other commitments.
If its predecessor is anything to go by (the original Men In Black grossed just over a billion dollars worldwide). Smith's latest screen blockbuster should help his music sales along very nicely too. Of course just like several of his previous hit songs (1990's The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, 1997's Men In Black, 1999's Wild Wild West), Smith's new single Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head) has a direct tie-in to his latest screen project.
The track also features prominently on his new album, Born to Reign. But it was his lasr movie, explains Smith, that played the bigger role in shaping the attitude of his new music.
Taking on the role of Muhammad Ali, as Smith has reiterated regularly over the past couple of years, changed the 33-year-old's life.
"A lot of that experience played into the titling of the new album, the concept of Born To Reign," he says.
"The first track on the album(the title track) is talking about the concept of destiny and how destiny is not something that is pre-determined, that you actually have to choose your destiny. And that is something that resonated with me from Ali, that he chose his destiny and how he could easily have chosen something different."
Musically, Born To Reign sounds as if it had as much spent on its production as, say, Michael jackson's Invincible.
But music, insists Smith, has got nothing to do with money, never has.
"I use my music to get current. When you work on a movie, you really get away from what's current-current fashions and current slang, whats going on at street level.
"Music is most current, so that really helps me to stay in tune with whats coming and allows me to direct the type of music I want to do and choose my way to be different.
Born to Reign (Sony) out now.