Independence day falls flat

It seems fair for Will Smith to want to exorcise the past few years with his album Based on a True Story’. It’s just a shame it’s full of bland, quasi-inspirational songs, writes Tara Joshi

- Tara Joshi

In the lead-up to releasing his first album in two decades, Will Smith revealed the advice he received from the upper echelons of hip-hop. Speaking to radio station Sirius XM, he explained that Jay-Z told him to be true to your story”, while Kendrick Lamar said, “Just say that shit you always been fucking scared to say.”

Sound advice. At his height as a rapper, Smith wasn’t exactly the hardest guy in the room. Instead, his skill lay in his breezy playfulness, his catchiness, even his family-friendliness (famously, he didn’t swear in his music). Paired with his exuberant pop-song-sampling production, often from his fellow Philadelphia native DJ Jazzy Jeff, Smith helped to commercialise hip-hop, even winning the first ever Grammy for Best Rap Performance.

There’s plenty of material to draw from, too. In his early acting career, Smith was adored as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, then, decades later, impressed with an Academy Award-winning performance in King Richard, about the father of the Williams sisters. But his 2022 Oscars win would become notorious instead for the moment he slapped Chris Rock over a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith’s shaved head, in front of a stunned Hollywood audience and viewers around the world.

Smith swiftly became persona non grata in the entertainment industry, while his unconventional marriage remained the butt of endless jokes. So