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You can really hear Will's 'Born to Reign' flow on this track.

That's a great article/interview with Sean Paul. People keep forgetting that they collaborated with Shaggy on his "Hey Sexy Lady" remix back in 2002/2003.

https://screenrant.com/bad-boys-4-movie-box-office-franchise-milestone/ Bad Boys 4 Box Office Pushes Franchise Past Major Milestone By Hannah Gearan Published 8 hours ago Thread Bad Boys: Ride or Die hits $1 billion globally despite the challenging movie landscape. Viewers are calling for a spinoff with Reggie and Armando. The success of Bad Boys 4 sets the stage for a potential Bad Boys 5 , with commercial prospects looking up. The Bad Boys: Ride or Die box-office helps push the franchise past a major milestone. The fourth installment in the Bad Boys franchise brings back leads Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett while bringing some of the series’ younger characters to the fore. Bad Boys: Ride or Die features a leading cast including Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Nuñez, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Tasha Smith, Jacob Scipio, and Dennis Greene. Per Deadline, the box office for Bad Boys: Ride or Die has pushed the franchise past a major milestone. With the fourth Bad Boys film’s box office total, the series has now made over $1 billion. At the time of writing, Bad Boys: Ride or Die has made an estimated $79.24 million worldwide with the worldwide box office total for Bad Boys: Ride or Die being $125.6 million. What This Bad Boys 4 News Means for the Franchise's Future Bad Boys 5 Just Got More Likely Bad Boys: Ride or Die has beat the odds in its box office success so far, as it was released during a time that has been very unsuccessful for blockbuster films. Various highly-anticipated films, including Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and The First Omen, have underperformed expectations at the 2024 box office. This year has had several record-low box office weekends, including Super Bowl weekend and Memorial Day weekend, which saw some of the lowest overall numbers in years. It has been difficult for theatrical releases to gain momentum again, but Bad Boys: Ride or Die has allowed the box office to pick up a little bit. Though Bad Boys: Ride or Die is getting mixed reviews, with a 64% Rotten Tomatoes score, audiences are loving the movie. The film has an impressive 97% approval rating among audiences, who are taking to social media to appreciate the film's action-packed conclusion. Audiences especially appreciated the roles of Reggie and Armando, younger members of the Bad Boys team, who took on more prominent roles in the sequel than they had in previous films, leading some to call for a Bad Boys spinoff that focuses on these characters. If the online reactions were not enough of a good sign, the box office totals for Bad Boys: Ride or Die make the prospects of Bad Boys 5 even more promising. The series has done fairly well commercially and is now one of the few series that can claim that much-coveted $1 billion franchise title. With this milestone hit, the franchise talents will be more likely to want to eke more life out of the Bad Boys franchise, whether that be through a direct sequel or a spinoff series.

Sean Paul on Collaborating With Will Smith https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/sean-paul-will-smith-bad-boys-song-beyonce-1235922914/

Great article. Thanks for posting AJ!

https://rockthebells.com/articles/classic-albums-big-willie-style-by-will-smith/ CLASSIC ALBUMS: 'BIG WILLIE STYLE' BY WILL SMITH By Stereo Williams Published Sat, July 16, 2022 at 12:00 AM EDT Up until very recently (let's say March 2022), it was pretty easy to view Will Smith as having had a charmed career. The megastar with the multi-hyphenate career has seemingly done it all. But when looking back at his journey, it's easy to spot just how many times the man took risks. Calculated risks, sure—but risks, nonetheless. After 1993's gold-selling Code Red, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince officially called it quits. The duo of "Jazzy" Jeff Townes and rapper Will Smith had scaled unimaginable heights together since they debuted in 1987 with Rock The House. They'd crafted a winning formula; with infectious production backing The Fresh Prince's humorous story raps, the duo had won Grammys and sold millions. Along the way, Will Smith had become an unexpected television star. In 1990, on the heels of winning their first Grammy, Smith was tapped to star in the Quincy Jones-produced NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. The show became a runaway hit and Smith became a TV fixture; only to make the jump to movies with roles in films like the Whoopi Goldberg comedy Made In America and a well-received dramatic turn in 1993's Six Degrees Of Separation. But it was the 1995 blockbuster Bad Boys that changed everything about Smith's career trajectory. Once the Michael Bay-directed buddy cop flick hit theaters that summer, with former sitcom stars Smith and Martin Lawrence paired together in one of the biggest action movies of the year, the stage was set for Smith to become a full-fledged action hero. Bad Boys grossed $141,407,024 worldwide; and suddenly, Will Smith was a movie megastar. He followed it with another huge box office hit: 1996's sci-fi popcorn flick Independence Day. The movie was the biggest of 1996 and the 2nd biggest of all time (at the time), grossing $817,400,891 globally. And, as wisecracking U.S. Marine Captain Steven Hiller, Will Smith sat centerstage in one of the biggest movies ever made. But a funny thing happened after Will Smith became a box office star; 1997s Men In Black presented the rapper/actor with an opportunity to meld his two loves. Here was a summer blockbuster that needed a theme song. And who better to provide than it's Grammy-winning star? The zany sci-fi comedy from Barry Sonnenfield starred Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as agents for a clandestine organization that knows of alien life forms on earth and serves as an interstellar CIA-esque agency to keep them in line. The movie would drop in the summer of 1997, and to the tune of a $250 million domestic gross, confirmed what now seemed obvious: Will Smith was the new king of the summer blockbusters. The movie's theme song was an infectious slice of ear candy: Smith rapping over a sample of Patrice Rushen's "Forget-Me-Nots." And the video, which famously featured Smith doing the electric slide with one of the movie's extraterrestrial life forms, would become one of the most popular of the year. "Men In Black" would top the charts in numerous countries, and the movie soundtrack, (which also included songs from Snoop Doggy Dogg, A Tribe Called Quest, and an early appearance from Destiny's Child), would sell three million copies in the U.S. on the strength of the hit single. His hit theme song about fighting aliens was a smash. It also birthed a new record deal for Smith at Columbia, and a chance to kickstart an unexpected musical second act. The mega success of "Men In Black" as a single set the table for Will Smith to approach his rap career anew: without his longtime partner and without resurrecting the "Fresh Prince" moniker he wanted to distance himself from. Smith would set to work on his first solo album. He'd been recording songs since 1996, around the time that The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air was wrapping up it's run. The end of that hit show marked, not only the end of Smith as merely the goofy-but-charming sitcom star he'd been since 1990; but also the end of "The Fresh Prince" as Smith's onscreen persona and brand. His new album wouldn't be a Fresh Prince solo album: it would be the debut album of Will Smith. And, as Will Smith, he was armed with a huge hit single. In the studio with Poke & Tone, Smith put together a collection of infectious and slick tracks. Puff Daddy's No Way Out (and hits by Missy Elliott and Wyclef Jean) had shifted Hip-Hop's landscape into a more lighthearted place; carried by samples of popular tracks from yesteryear. The murders of 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. cast a dark cloud over late 1996 and early 1997, and the rap climate responded by taking a hard turn into sunnier sounds. "My strength is that I can feel people; I know what the marketplace is ready for," Smith would explain. "I was ready to write my latest album years ago, but not until the tragic loss of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. did I feel it was time. I felt an opening, a desire for change from the darkness of rap music in general. When I heard Tupac, then Biggie, got killed, I said, 'This **** is too much for people to be dying because of it.'” Everything got very shiny. Videos were awash in color and choreography; and it felt like every hit song had a hook that you'd heard before: whether it was Wyclef reworking the Bee Gee's "Staying Alive," or Puff working Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride" into "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down." Coming on the heels of two high-profile twin murders, it was a splashy, flashy time—full of big hooks and big money. And Will Smith inadvertently gave the era it's most notorious anthem. "Gettin' Jiggy Wit' It" would be the theme song of late 1990s Will Smith, and would come to embody the times in ways that are easy to dismiss. It's the most definitive hit for Will Smith 2.0, and it helped announce the arrival of rap music's most technicolor-splattered and unapologetically "pop" period. In an interview with Michael Joyner in 1997, Smith explained that "jiggy" was a derivative of the slur "jiggaboo," rearranged and refashioned into something more empowering and fun. The Trackmasters-produced hit flipped Sister Sledge's "He's The Greatest Dancer" and featured ghostwritten raps contributed from Nas, and even Jazzy Jeff contributed scratching to the single. "...Jiggy" shot all the way to No. 1 and stayed there for a whopping three weeks in March 1997. Somewhat contrary to the album's longstanding image, Big Willie Style boasts a slightly eclectic handful of guest artists: from TLC's Left Eye to jazz rap auteurs and polysyllabic 70s fetishists Camp Lo; not to mention funk legends Cameo. R&B stars Coko, Trey Lorenz and the late Kenny Greene (of Intro fame) provide vocals. It's Coko's uncredited but distinct voice gracing the hook of "Men In Black;" and none other than singer/actress Tichina Arnold provides those soulful vocals on the chorus of the album's lead single "Just Cruisin.'" Big Willie Style would come to be one of the albums that epitomized the often-mocked "Shiny Suit Era": that period circa 1997 when rap videos were awash in flossiness, rap lyrics seemed preoccupied with superficiality and sampling well-known pop hooks was the fastest way to dominate the radio. - Will Smith (ROLLING STONE interview, 1998) He would also see major shifts in his personal life in 1997. His first marriage – in 1992, to Sheree Zampino – ended in divorce after producing Willard Smith Ill, or "Trey," who was five years old when Smith released Big Willie Style. "The other day one of his friends was crying," Will would recall to Rolling Stone in '98. "And Trey said, 'Hey, don’t cry. At least you get to live with your mommy and your daddy.' He wasn’t down. He was sharing a piece of himself, trying to help. That hurt . . . . Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I want to have a bunch of kids. I could have five, but I’d take up to seven. Healthy babies being born are the happiest times you experience in life." Will's bond with his young son would be immortalized in the heartfelt single "Just The Two Of Us," an interpolation of the Bill Withers hit. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett would get married about a month after the release of Big Willie Style. Family was becoming a major part of Smith's public persona and dominating his personal priorities. For "Just The Two Of Us" to become one of the album's biggest hits was sweetly appropriate for the young dad and soon-to-be husband. Jada admitted, even then, that coming into the orbit of a burgeoning superstar was a daunting proposition. She'd carved her own formidable career as actress, having starred, like Will, on a hit NBC sitcom (A Different World), before making the leap to successful movies like Menace II Society, The Nutty Professor and Set It Off. “When I came to Hollywood, I planned on being the biggest star,” Jada told Rolling Stone in 1998, just as Big Willie Style was nearing the eight million mark in sales. “But when I got with Will, I said, ‘I’m going to have to compromise, because he’s not going to. That’s not even a discussion.’ So I had to ask myself, ‘Is career more important than having a good man who loves you and will provide a happy family?’ I choose Will. So now my work gets forty percent. I can still have a career. I just won’t have the one I planned on. That will not happen. I put my family first.” Their son Jaden Smith would be born in July of 1998. Two years later, their daughter, Willow, was born in October of 2000. Of course, Will Smith would close out the 1990s with his first stab at the world of suspense thrillers (1998's Enemy Of the State) his first high-profile failure (1999s Wild, Wild West) and another multiplatinum smash of an album (2000s Willennium) en route to becoming one of the biggest stars the world has ever seen. In 1997, he was on the front end of what remains one of the most remarkable runs in entertainment

LL dropped his new joint.

Will Smith is going to perform among other artists at 'La Velada', a boxing event created by Spanish streamer Ibai Llanos. July 13. Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, Madrid. They say he's gonna do something special there! Hopefully he'll perform something from 'Dance In Your Darkest Moments'. https://www.instagram.com/p/C8Kty7aIItQ/

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a61049873/bad-boys-4-reggie-dennis-mcdonald/ *Warning - Spoiler alert* Bad Boys 4 star reveals big Reggie moment wasn't in the original script "They just told me they wanted me back." By Divya SoniPUBLISHED: 09 JUNE 2024 Bad Boys: Ride or Die star Dennis McDonald has shared that his iconic end scene wasn't actually in the original script. McDonald was first introduced in Bad Boys II as Reggie, the young man who is bullied by Mike (Will Smith) and Marcus (Martin Lawrence) for wanting to take Marcus' daughter on a date. Axelle/Bauer-Griffin//Getty Images Related: Bad Boys 4 first reactions land ahead of cinema release The clip quickly became a fan-favourite, often resurfacing on social media, but now Reggie is receiving some respect as he returns for the fourth instalment of the franchise. "This is a blessing," McDonald told Entertainment Weekly. "When I got the script and I found out what I was doing, I already knew that this might be something real, real big. He's finally in the family, [Marcus and Mike] finally accepted him, he's finally getting his due, so I'm just happy about that." Bad Boys: Ride or Die sees McDonald return as Marcus' now son-in-law, who saves the day when the bad boys are on the run after being framed. Reggie, now a Marine staff sergeant, saves Marcus' wife, daughter, and grandson from an army of men infiltrating their home, as Mike and Marcus watch helplessly via video feeds. After killing the attackers and saving his family, Reggie earns the respect of the stunned bad boys. Sony Pictures Related: Bad Boys 4 debuts with lower Rotten Tomatoes rating than previous movie The final scene of the movie ends with Reggie receiving a great honour, which McDonald revealed "wasn't in the script at all". Mike and Marcus argue over who mans the barbeque grill, then they laugh when Reggie approaches to take over. As they respectfully step aside, the movie ends on Reggie's smiling face. "That was kind of crazy — I was in Miami filming, and then I flew back home, and then they called me like three or four days later to come back to Miami to shoot another scene. "They just told me they wanted me back, so I'm thinking I had to do something over [again]. But I had lines and everything, and it was the whole end of the movie. They're like, 'Yeah, you end the whole movie. It ends with your face.' And I'm like, 'Are you serious?' I was just overwhelmed."

Yeah, I've already seen talks about a desire for a 5th one. https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a61068051/will-smith-martin-lawrence-bad-boys-5/ Will Smith and Martin Lawrence address Bad Boys 5 return "If the fans ask for it, you know we could be back." By Sam WarnerPUBLISHED: 11 JUNE 2024 Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have addressed a potential return for a fifth Bad Boys movie. The pair are back as detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett for the newly-released fourth instalment in the franchise, Bad Boys: Ride or Die. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, the two stars were asked about returning once again in another sequel, admitting they would be up for it – though there would have to be a good reason. Frank Masi//Sony Pictures "Well, these younger actors are going to need to do more of the stunts, that's for sure," Smith quipped. "It is a world and characters that are just an absolute joy to be with. "In a movie theater with Mike and Marcus, it just feels like home. So, as long as there's a reason – I never wanted to be one of those dudes who make sequels just because people will go." The star added that he likes to do sequels if "there is something to say" and the characters are developing in a way that "will be interesting and fun to watch and maybe even a little helpful". "Is there something that can happen in these characters' lives that is worth asking people to go to a movie theater for?" he added. "And with this movie, the answer is a resounding yes." Frank Masi//Sony Pictures Lawrence added that they "always have so much fun making these movies" and "you've got to give the fans what they want". "Will and I have a great time working together, so as long as the fans want it and the demand is there, I'll keep trying to give them what they want," he added. However, Lawrence admitted they will "have to see" regarding a possible Bad Boys 5 movie, and while he'll "never say never", it also "has to make sense". "If the fans ask for it, you know we could be back," he added. Bad Boys: Ride or Die is now out in UK cinemas.

I am very happy for him. The marketing work for the movie has been intense these weeks and he has been very active in social media. Martin, even with the health problems went out there and toured like the best for the movie. Deserved success!

Jerry Bruckheimer says after the success at the box office over the weekend he will begin working on a Bad Boys 5 this week.

Yeah I’m so pleased for him that’s it’s been a hit. I still see people make comments about the slap and how they will never watch a film again but internet trolls can be very loud and obviously they aren’t in the majority of people. You can’t cancel Will Smith.

It's a new years anthem to me AJ just like Summertime is you can't get through summer without that song and Will2K just makes bringing in the new year more fun for me personally Willennium era was so much fun

FP still got it i'm so excited for the album i don't mind Sean Paul hearing this though made me intantly think of the Switch reggae mix lol

Sup Guys it's been a minute, but it's so good to hear FP's getting back to music after his performance from the Grammy Hip Hop 50 celebration i've been hoping he would get that itch to release an album i need to listen to that track with Sean Paul ofcourse i'm with the peeps that want that classic JJFP hip hop fun vibe and Will just spittin but yeah after all he's been through lately i'm sure he wants to vent that out i don't mind more serious FP but hope theres still some fun on the album

I saw that article this morning. It feels good to see Will back on top. It's well deserved. It's kind of crazy that his last few films had an average response, but this one was the hit, even when there are some people who won't look past some of his problems in the past couple years. I plan on seeing Bad Boys Ride or Die again soon.

Hahaha… just listen to the first 45 seconds of the song. Will’s verse is first.

Box Office: Will Smith’s ‘Bad Boys 4’ Delivers Huge Victory for Actor With $56M U.S. Debut, $104.6M Globally https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/will-smith-bad-boys-4-box-office-opening-victory-1235918123

I don't even dare to hear it.. but I will, eventually. Just have to cope with my massive Seanpaulophobia.

MC Shan also claims he was approached out it. He's gotten hard to respect though with some of his outlandish claims and drug problems.

just because a person is ‘grown’ doesn’t mean they have to curse. will is a witty & descriptive wordsmith, who managed to be successful for several decades prior without profanity. so why start now? especially since he took such a strong stance against it. he gained a large following because his music was safe for all ages. he could risk losing that now.

everybody’s claiming they ‘could’ve been will smith’. first kid n play, now de la soul. there’s only one. the show was created specifically for will. quincy jones was inspired by the video ‘parents just don’t understand’. the clue is in the title of the show.. even f the show was to go to either of those groups, there’s no guarantee it would have had the same success. will & jeff have a special charisma that cannot be replaced.

Saw the film last night, I loved it. Funniest film I’ve seen in a while. Normally by the time a movie gets to number 4 they get pretty bad but they’ve still got it. Enjoyed all the cameos too. My friend who likes Will but isn’t as hardcore as us liked it too. The cinema was laughing the whole time.