Remember when Will Smith was the fun rapper? The enormously affable, uncomplicated rapper? The giddily cheerful Fresh Prince behind “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” the Big Willie Styling hunk of “Jiggy Wit It,” and the sunny seasonal greeter from the anthemic “Summertime”?
Smith doesn’t. At least not judging from the weighty rationalizations (or downright excuses, you decide) that drive the convoluted hip-hop of “Based on a True Story,” his first new album since 2005.
Many things are bringing Smith down, or pushing him to endless self-examinations, as he (mostly implicitly) deals with the fallout from that angry slap during the 2022 Oscars and its immediate effect on his good-guy rep. Even without those developments, Smith could of course no longer be the precocious 20-year-old of “He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper,” recorded with Philly neighbor/scratcher Jazzy Jeff, or the near-30-year-old who, after starring in a series of movie blockbusters, came back into music to drop a swaggering, 9-times-platinum solo debut, “Big Willie Style.”
What has changed most for Smith in “Based on a True Story” is the abandonment of a big part of his familiar hitmaking aesthetic. Smith’s flow is no longer conversational, liquidy and silver-tongued; his lyrics are no longer convivial or directed straight to the heart and head. Rather than concern himself with a lightness of being to guide his spirit (and his spirituality), “Based on a True Story” complicates things by wallowing in self-psychology and an elitist’s sense of what darkness is to a gazillionaire on songs such as “Tantrum.”
Where once Smith was happy to offer charmingly boyish bon mots, effortlessly told laissez-faire life lessons and grand sales pitches, the existential musings of “Based on a True Story” are often dense and dreary — and preachy! Smith may have talked at you on all of his earliest albums, but he never actually mounted sermons like his new, holy-rolling “You Can Make It,” one of the “True Story” singles with Ye’s friends, the Sunday Service Choir, that hit the top of Billboard’s Gospel Airplay chart last winter.
Meant to portray how he’s grown from his past blunders and a refreshed zeal for finding meaning in missteps, “Based on a True Story” attempts to be a teaching moment without being a reaching moment.
This doesn’t mean Smith’s “True Story” is without its disarming charms. Though brief, “Int. Barbershop Day,” with pal DJ Jazzy Jeff, vocalist B. Simone and a chorus of naysayers, is driving, old-school West Philly pop-hop that doesn’t sound old. Instead, it sounds fun, though hubris-filled, as the track makes sport of Will’s very bad last few years with lyrics loudly announcing “Will Smith is canceled” and “I ain’t never going to forgive him for that shit he did.”
My bet is that all would be forgiven for Smith if he and Jazzy made a full album together, again. Even in miniature, their two tastes taste great together. And that begins to look like the case as the rapper brings up the DJ again (“Me and Jeff, like Jordan and Scotty”) at the top of the throbbing “You Lookin’ for Me?” Simultaneously punched out, yet refusing to stay down for the count, a gruff Smith does his actorly best to understand, then diss, his public’s view of the slap heard round the world.
“If I was you and I saw me, I’d see why you’d be aggravated,” he sneers with resignation. Then again, Smith “took a lot,” now is back on top, so “y’all gonna have to get acclimated.” He knows that he’s still Oscar’s worst enemy (“Won’t stop, my shit’s still hot even though I won’t get nominated”) and that you’ll always be way curious about Mrs. Smith (“Personal life with my wife, mind your business, it’s complicated”). Ultimately, though, Smith will always measure personal growth in first-weekend box office grosses – see 2024’s hit “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” – rather than anything psychotherapeutic: “All that matters is the fact that I’m still getting compensated.” That’s just simple math, and straightforward melodic hip-hop + being a smartass = message.
It’s when he veers further from that formula and finds self-help Psych 101 lessons and 21st century mantra to light his way through songs such as “Tantrum” that Smith goes from exaltation to trite exhortation. “Searching and questioning, looking for answers,” Smith holds onto an inner child who’s throwing a fit, while his “ego keeps holding me ransom” and his “fear controls me at random.” Oh, and “life can get ugly, but fuck it, I’m handsome.” If the medicine doesn’t heal quick enough, Smith is content to forgive himself and move on, making a lingering stop at the mirror along the way.
Smith even turns a potentially sensual scene with temptress Teyana Taylor – in the seductive, jittery tones of “Hard Times (Smile),” with its sultry Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band sample – into something you’d hear from an elbow-patched professor coming on coyly to a TikTok beauty influencer. The old Big Willie would have flexed a little muscle, flashed a little smile and brought the sexual tension to rise with a subtly wizened brand of machismo. Here, he just offers a limp teachable moment, and a grin. And, how do you spoil one of the disco era’s slinkiest tunes?
Even Smith’s interstitial moments – several church organ-filled “Reverend” bits – take the humor out of funk and hip-hop’s finest tradition, the humorous interlude, and fill it with the hot air of “interior wastelands” and “ways of being with our obstacles.”
Though the goal of “Based on a True Story” is connected to a willingness to learn from life’s lessons, and prove there’s power in positivity (over responsibility), Will Smith’s message of mental health and all-around might sounds like mere moralizing (and rationalizing) over way too many half-assed, over-produced beats. Smith’s pontificating could use a little bit of silly fiction and some Big Willie swagger — the old kind, not the hubristic strut that he walks through this mostly tired “True Story” with.
From Variety US