10/28/2022 0 Comments The fresh prince of bel air font![]() ![]() They had created a full song with three verses, clocking in at over three minutes. ![]() I recorded it, we mixed it and I gave it to the guy from NBC and next thing you know it was on the show.” “I programmed the first thing that came to my mind Will wrote something. “We might’ve done that in 25 minutes,” Townes says. “ we already had the subject matter so it was like, ‘I already know what it is, let me write this and I’m good.’” As a rapper, Smith excelled at comedic storytelling-songs like “ Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble” and “ Nightmare On My Street” helped make them rap stars-so with the show’s plot in mind he wrote his verses in a matter of minutes. “The subject matter was the hard part of making songs,” Townes says. I got in one little fight and my mom got scaredĪnd said you’re movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air Started makin' trouble in my neighborhood When a couple of guys who were up to no good That was at the time that New Jack Swing was very big, so you can hear a little bit of that influence.” Jazzy Jeff whipped up the instrumental in no time and Smith wrote to it just as fast, spinning off narrative rhymes about his fictional life and times: “Not like it needed to be the most intricate beat in the world I knew I could go as hip-hop as I wanted to. He sought to make an instrumental that would be palatable to a wide audience, yet still representative of their musical roots. “We looked at this like how we looked at making records,” says Townes, who kicked out a beat on his MPC3000. When it came time to create the show’s theme, they hit the studio to do what they did best, unaware that they were making history too. “Parents Just Don’t Understand” was certified Gold and won the first-ever Grammy for Best Rap Performance in 1989, and their albums Rock The House and In This Corner… went Gold in ‘, respectively. “The song was supposed to be a hip-hop answer to classic sitcom themes that explained the premises of the shows, like Gilligan’s Island and obviously The Beverly Hillbillies.”ĭJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince had never made music for TV, but they already had a sturdy track record of making good, catchy rap songs. “From the beginning of the pilot process, there was never any doubt that Will would rap the opening theme,” Fresh Prince co-creator Andy Borowitz told Art Of The Title. From the graffiti-font credits to “Jazz” (Jeff’s character) and Will’s signature dap, to season one guest appearances by rappers like Queen Latifah and Heavy D, it was clear that hip-hop was ingrained in the show’s DNA. The Fresh Prince’s script and aesthetic embraced the era’s emerging music culture. Medina and Jones had seen the Scott Kalvert-directed video for DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s hit song “ Parents Just Don’t Understand” and noticed Smith’s natural charisma in the cartoonish clip-he was the obvious choice for their lead. ![]() During an off-night, Smith flew out to Los Angeles to audition for music producer and then-burgeoning media mogul Quincy Jones (the show’s executive producer) as well as music exec and co-producer Benny Medina, whose own real-life experience provided the inspiration for the show’s rags-to-riches, fish-out-of-water premise. “I was kinda like, ‘Man, whatever,’” Townes tells Genius.ĭJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince were on Run-D.M.C.’s Tougher Than Leather tour when Will got the call to come in for a screen test. Even DJ and producer “Jazzy” Jeff Townes couldn’t believe his partner was getting his own show. But when The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air debuted back in 1990-one year before unlikely stars Ice Cube and Ice-T went Hollywood with major roles in Boyz N The Hood and New Jack City-the notion that a bona fide MC like Will Smith would star in a sitcom seemed far-fetched. These days, when we laugh at Issa Rae’s comical freestyles on HBO’s Insecure or consider the rapper-as-overnight-(micro)celebrity premise of Donald Glover’s Atlanta, seeing hip-hop on the small screen doesn’t seem odd at all. During its six-season run (1990-1996), The Fresh Prince was one of network TV’s highest-rated shows, attracting millions of viewers on NBC and in syndication, and making generations of fans in the process. If you’re between the ages of 18 and 40, you can probably recite the lyrics to the theme song of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air without consulting its page on this site. “Innn West Philadelphia, born and raised …” ![]()
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