Is Will Smith’s New Music Debut a Sign of His Victory Lap?

Despite detractors and naysayers, Will Smith is having a moment—again. Unlike a couple years ago when that moment was mired in controversy thanks to the “slap heard around the world,” this time around Smith is back in the spotlight for more positive things.

The fourth “Bad Boys” film, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” helped the nearly three-decade-old franchise cross the $1 billion line. Smith will also it’s just been grace the stage at the 2024 BET Awards to debut new music.

“From his start as a rapper to ‘The Fresh Prince’ to being a box office king as one of the Bad Boys, Will Smith is truly a global icon, and we are honored to welcome him back to grace the BET Awards stage,” said Connie Orlando, EVP Specials, Music Programming & Music Strategy at BET in a statement sent to The Root. We look forward to Will adding to yet another defining night for the culture that is not to be missed.”

I don’t need to tell you how important Smith is to hip-hop history (looking at you, 1989 Grammys); how his music still made waves even when he turned to films and won awards (looking at you Men In Black); or how his 1991 hit “Summertime” is still in constant rotation from Boomers, Millenials and Gen-Zers over 30 years later.

I also don’t need to tell you how performing at a Black awards show after two years of being raked over the coals in mainstream (read: white) Hollywood following the massive success of a movie that Black folks turned out in droves for nearly 30 years after the franchise’s initial debut is a big deal. As previously noted by Candace McDuffie, Black people never stopped supporting him or embracing him despite his kerfuffle at the Oscars. This new announcement is just further proof of that.

But if Big Willy dropping new music still comes as a shock or a perplexing notion, it shouldn’t. The Fresh Prince has been teasing fans and followers that he’d been in the studio for some time. He performed “Men in Black” with J Balvin at Coachella earlier this year and during the press run for “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” he said something new was coming sooner than later.

“This last year and a half, I been in the lab. So, I have a project that without question is the most personal and powerful music that I’ve ever made,” he told Extra. He expounded further to Access Hollywood during the L.A. premiere of the movie, explaining:

“The last few years of my life have been spiritually, emotionally transformative. I have more to say than I’ve ever had to say in my life and music was the only way that I could truly express what I had to say.”

Given how much he’s been in the spotlight the last few years, it’ll be interesting to see what this new music era will tell us now about the Prince turned King we’ve all known and loved.