Will Smith Teases New Music, Tour with DJ Jazzy Jeff
Will Smith took the world by surprise last week when he returned to rap on a remix to Bomba Estéreo’s Colombian electronic hit “Fiesta.” In a new interview with Beats 1, he revealed that he’s got quite a bit more up his sleeve.
“I’m pretty much poppin’ in the studio everyday and I’m looking for artists to collaborate with,” Smith told Zane Lowe. “I’ve probably recorded 30 songs. I have six or seven that I really like.”
Getting back into the studio hasn’t been entirely easy for the iconic rapper-actor. “I have so many things I wanted to say,” he noted, when asked about the challenges he faced while recording new music. “I’m struggling with saying them in a way that fit the flavor of music that I tend to like.”
Smith has been in the studio with “a lot of young artists and philosophers”—Drake and Kanye West are reportedly among them—working on his first album since 2005’s Lost and Found. “I’m definitely interested in pushing the envelope of spitting. How far can you go? I’ma keep giving it a shot up until I’m 70 or 80 years old.”
He admits that he was “terrified” about his return to the mic. “It’s like when you’ve had a certain amount of success, it seems like it should breed confidence, but it actually doesn’t,” he said, while crediting his kids Jaden and Willow for their fearlessness. “Fear is the killer of creativity. … I’m trying to get comfortable getting back to failing—fail forward.”
As if that wasn’t enough, the former “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” told Lowe that he and DJ Jazzy Jeff are planning a world tour together for summer 2016. “Jeff and I actually have never done a full tour,” he said. “So I’m looking this summer will be the first time we go out on a full world tour.”
Plus, watch the proud dad gush about Jaden and Willow, and confirm plans for a third Bad Boys movie.