hiponline
CORPORATE LINE: A legendary music sensation, Smith made his first record as a high school senior and subsequently embarked on a rap career with friend Jeff Townes. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince recorded several platinum and multi-platinum albums, winning two Grammys and three American Music Awards. Smith's first solo album, Big Willie Style , has sold 8 million copies. His album Willennium and the featured single Will2K went double platinum, selling over 2 million copies each.
THE GREAT:
“Party Starter” – Will Smith is best at bringing the dance club anthems. When he isn’t trying to brag and act street he can still flow.
“Lost & Found” – Smith isn’t the best rapper yet he has some points on what is wrong with hip-hop today. He is right even if he isn’t a great M.C.
THE AVERAGE:
“Here He Comes” – Firs Will Smith borrows the intro from the old-school Batman theme and then brags about having everything in the world… thanks for that. Good thing he isn’t arrogant.
“Switch” – Smith tries to reinvigorate his old hit singles with “Switch”—it isn’t up to par with his hits of old.
“Mr. Nice Guy” – Will takes his shots by attempting to prove that he isn’t soft. He tries to take on Eminem by telling us he’s richer. Good angle.
THE BAD:
“I Wish I Made That” – Smith is preoccupied with being called soft and its getting tired.
“If You Can’t Dance (Slide)” – Smith’s singing is terrible and the rhymes aren’t much better.
“Scary Story” – Smith wants to tell his story Eminem-style—it goes awry.
FRANKLY: Will Smith is so preoccupied with proving that he isn’t soft that most of the record focuses on it. If Smith dropped more party anthems and less attempts at proving how great he is we might have something worth listening to.
+ CC Morris
March.29.2005
scotsman
WILL SMITH: LOST AND FOUND **
INTERSCOPE, £12.99
THE Will Smith brand trucks on with a ninth album of parent-friendly rap. It appears to be jocular business as usual on the throwaway opening track Here He Comes, which promotes the idea of Smith as a rapping superhero. To ten-year-olds maybe but, cliché though it is, Smith’s whole-some family man image wins him zero cred points from the hip-hop fraternity. "Sometimes y’all mistake nice for soft" he counters on Mr Nice Guy, a smart rap with shades of Eminem’s satirical wit. Elsewhere, he challenges Christian fundamentalism with no great originality on Ms Holy Roller and misfires in his attempts to address post-9/11 malaise on Tell Me Why. Militancy doesn’t suit him, but he’s grown out of grooving on the beach.
FIONA SHEPHERD
Telegraph
Will Smith
Lost and Found
Interscope, £12.99
It may seem a strange thing to say of a Grammy Award-winning rapper and Oscar-nominated movie star, but Will Smith has an inferiority complex. On this, his ninth album, barely a couplet passes without Smith ruing his own versatility or griping about the public's refusal to take him seriously.
Met by popular and critical acclaim as the rapping half of DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Smith's hip-hop career has been overshadowed by his enormously successful forays into television (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) and film (Ali, Bad Boys, Independence Day). For some reason, this really ticks him off.
On the rock-riffed Mr Niceguy, Smith rails wittily against his critics, responding to an old Eminem diss along the way, and on I Wish I Made That, he whines, "I think y'all love me/But y'all place other rappers above me."
To find out why, Smith should refer to the ghastly 9/11 think piece Tell Me Why or the watered-down crunk of Party Starter. He may prefer to blame his clean-cut ubiquity, but Smith just doesn't deserve the rap credibility he covets.
Andrew Pettie