Will Smith Interview
Willenium Extravaganza
Why is it so important to keep
it clean?
To me theirs two issues. Number one rap music like movies
is not kept away from children. There's not the ratings system
to keep them from certain sections of the store. Rap music,
people can act like its not, but rap music is for kids. You
know its completely directed at children and impressionable
minds and I just think it's dangerous to pump that kind of
cavalier misogyny and hatred in young minds. A big part of
it is a lot of the artists that are doing it are young too.
You know so their people that haven't even really developed
their point of view of life and are thrust into a position
where their role models and their up on stage and can rile
people up to do things and I got kids I don't want em listening
to that trash.
Are you gonna do any concerts for your new album? Obviously
your gonna do a willennium tour but what is that gonna look
like?
Yeah I have an idea that I'm thinking about working on a different
type of stage performance. I have duets on the album with
different people, with K-Ci and sisquo on wild wild west.i
wanna do a performance and I'm calling it tag team performance.
Where its not a normal opening act and then the second group
and then the headliner everybody performs for the 2 hours
2 and a half hours straight together and you do it tagteam
you know and like who does the next song and you play with
the audience as one big group trying to revolutionise touring
revolutionise it
Who did you look up to the most when you were growing up?
Who inspired you to be a rapper?
I guess, lyrically, theres a guy named grandmaster cas. He
was originally of a group called the cold crush 4. Grandmaster
cas was the first rapper I listened to who was funny. You
know he said things that were funny. He wrote jokes and stuff
into his lyrics and he told stories and all that and he just
completely blew my mind. And grandmaster melle mel was just
the phattest lyricist ever and those guys inspired me to write
clean lyrics and stuff that was fun and tell stories, you
know the message is a hip-hop classic telling stories, and
looking toward the light not embracing the darkness. That's
another thing that rap music has a tendancy to do today is
embrace the darkness. Where in old school hip hop you lived
in the darkness, you searched for the light.
If Will 2k is any evidence of
what the album is gonna sound like I have a feeling you gonna
be okay
Let me tell you, this album is clearly the best album that
I have done. Its so many different types of records and you
know a lotta time when people put out their first single they
put it out cause it's the best record on the album and in
this case and its rare but will2k is nowhere near the best
record on the album, you know it was the most timely record
on the album but I mean this album is just insane, its just
ridiculous.
Now did you feel any pressure
that this is your last cd before the end of the millennium?
What I really wanted to do was make an album that was kind
of retro , and had a retro kind of a vibe too it, ol skool
hip-hop, but also had kind of the new flavour, that's the
reason I wanted to work with the people that I worked with..
Now you and Jazzy Jeff, you
been together for so long, ever get in a fight?
You know we fight and we argue about stuff all the time, you
know creatively we'll debate, we have heated debates, we get
along well and our creative energy is really strong and really
positive so you know its good fights.
I understand on this new album
that you refer to yourself as the fresh prince again, what
happens with that?
What I was trying to do, I wanted the album to feel retro,
kinda ol skool, me and jeff got together with slick rick and
with biz, and theres actually a record on the album called
pump me up with just turntables, jeff is cuttin with me rhyming
and you know it just felt natural, going back to the philly
roots.
Fresh Prince you have been a
pioneer emcee in the hip-hop game how ill you maintain this
higher presence of emceeing, how do you do it since you in
union square, how do you do it?
That guy right there is a hardcore hip hop fan, the union
square that was the first place we ever played in new york,
we played at the union square me and jeff, and that was when
jeff first revealed the transformer scratch, that was 13 years
ago, the way I maintain, keep it positive man, keep it fun,
the original essence of hip-hop was partying and having fun,
and im keeping it real for real,
Did you go back to Philly and
get your roots going for the new album?
Yeah I went back to Philly worked with Jeff, we recorded 9
of the songs in Philly, I wanted to be in the places that
I used to hang and the people I used to roll with in a sense
of that true ol skool flava that created the music that Jeff
and I did back in the day.
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