DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince

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Any fans here? I love Summertime, I'm Looking For The One (To Be With Me), and Brand New Funk
 
Yeah, I am! :clap:

When Will's acting and solo recording career took off, the band seemed to be the collateral damage for his success.
 
Love all there song's, wish they'd do a new album!
 
Yeah, used to enjoy their work. Homebase was probably my favourite of their records.
 
I wish they'd do a mini reunion tour. A few festivals and a few small solo shows.
Do their hits, plus some of his solo songs.
 
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince to reunite for 2016 tour and possible album
by Eric Renner Brown, Posted October 7 2015 — 11:38 AM EDT
dj-jazzy-jeff.jpg

Will Smith threw the hip-hop world a curveball Monday when he told Zane Lowe on Beats 1 that he plans to hit the road ...ext summer. Jeff, who recorded five albums with Smith from 1987 to 1993, has confirmed to EW that a reunion is a serious possibility. “The time is right on so many different levels,” the DJ said by phone Tuesday. “It’s simple as Will has been my partner for 30-something years. I’ve been waiting for him just to say, ‘Let’s go.’”

Jeff attributes talk of new tunes and a tour — Smith also told Lowe that he’s “pretty much poppin’ in the studio everyday” — to conversations he’s had with the star about adapting to changes in the music industry. “I think he’s really coming to grips that so much of it is independent and you can do it on your own,” Jeff says. “Coming from a record background and as long as we made records, that’s really hard for someone to understand that it’s different now. We always talk about going into these million dollar studios and making these records that we made. [But] having the ability to make a record in a hotel room, if we’d have had that, we would have probably did 50 albums!”

According to Jeff, he and Smith “perform together maybe like four or five times a year, just on different occasions” like movie release parties and Jeff’s own gigs around the world. After those appearances, Smith often remarks to Jeff that the duo should reunite in earnest — prompting Jeff to reply, “I already do it! I’m waiting for you!” While Jeff says he and Smith “haven’t started our stuff yet,” he praises his return to the studio. “The thing about Will, from the day I met him, he is never lacking in ideas and content,” Jeff says. “It’s just the execution. I’m happy that he’s executing now. With the help of his kids — who are so into just doing it — he’s kinda like, ‘You know what? We can just do it.’ The possibilities are endless because we have these resources that we didn’t have 20 years ago.”

And although Smith’s schedule might be the limiting factor for a DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince reunion, Jeff has kept busy in his own right. The DJ says he plays more than 160 gigs a year, and he provided scratch overdubs for the summer box office smash Straight Outta Compton — an offer he initially thought was “an elaborate joke” when he received multiple texts from numbers he didn’t know that turned out to be Dr. Dre trying to contact him. The mogul eventually got through to Jeff, who says Dre told him “there’s no one that I would pick other than you” to do the DJ work in the film. “I was really honored, I was just really happy that I could help,” Jeff says.

Still, the idea of being an “elder statesman” of hip-hop is still a little weird to the DJ, who tells a story of hanging out at a Hong Kong club with Dre and Snoop Dogg, where all three were performing. “Will and I still do this,” he says. “There’s a side of it that you never lose, that this is funny. ‘Can you believe this?’”
 
DJ Jazzy Jeff Talks New Album With Will Smith: 'The Timing Is Perfect'

"He has never stopped rapping," says DJ of his partner

By Jason Newman - Rolling Stone

It's been 22 years since Will Smith (then known as the Fresh Prince) and DJ Jazzy Jeff released their fifth and ostensibly final album, Code Red. But unlike other pioneering groups like A Tribe Called Quest and Fugees, the group's end was not predicated on infighting or ego. Smith's acting bug became a full-on fever and Jazzy Jeff became an in-demand DJ who still performs more than 150 shows a year.

The childhood friends have remained close, and their reunion, revealed by Smith in an interview with Apple Music earlier this week, was hiding in plain sight for years: Jeff regularly DJs the wrap parties for Smith's movies, with the rapper inevitably hopping on the mic to perform a medley of the duo's greatest hits.

But this week, Smith announced the duo's reunion with plans for a new album and the first world tour of their career. The rapper told Zane Lowe he has recorded 20 to 30 songs — which may or may not appear on the album — but the duo are taking their time in recording new material. "Timelines are a thing of record companies," Jeff tells Rolling Stone. With Smith releasing his first verse...n a decade last week, the prolific DJ spoke to Rolling Stone on the past, present and future of the pop-rap pioneers.

Where are you in the recording process?
Will's been recording. We had a really good conversation because he wants to get back in recording. One of the things that we talk about is going from all of these stupid, giant, million-dollar studios to now having the ability to record something in a hotel room. We laugh about the amount of material we would have put out if we had had those resources [in the Eighties and Nineties]. I want to just start recording to get him back into this space that there are no rules anymore! Every time we do an impromptu show, he's like, "Man, we can go out and we should go out." And I'm like, "I'm already out. I'm waiting for you!"

Do you have a recording timetable yet?
Not yet. I know just with the schedules, it will be in sections. It could be any time like, I'm home for two weeks and we're going to get together and do something. That could really start off with me sending him something and him recording it and then us getting together. But the only way that I will [record the finished track] is if we are in the studio together. That's how it's always been. I’m not worried about me at all. I think the beauty of it is that he started it, and he's ready to go.

Was it always in the back of your mind while touring all these years that you guys would release another album?
Let me put it like this: You don't retire from an art. This has always been inside of him and he's always wanted to do this. He has never stopped rapping. It's just that being the biggest movie star on the planet, you don't have enough time. There has never been a time that he didn't jump on my microphone when we're together, because that is in his blood. You think you're going to be around a basketball court with Michael Jordan and he is not going to shoot? That'll never happen! I’m just happy that he's at the point where he's like, "You know what? I really want to do this." And the whole idea is he realizes he wants to have fun. I can tell the level of enjoyment he has from doing it.

So he performs and says, "This feels good. We should record." When did that go from general discussion to you both seriously considering an album?
Every time we would get together, he would talk about, "Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I got a concept for a record." The last time we got together seriously was in the spring when he started Suicide Squad and I went up [to see him] and we talked for four hours. I just finished the Dayne Jordan project and I played it for him from beginning to end and he was just like, "Wow." And I just went on to tell him like, "Listen, I did this all by myself. This wasn't through a record label; we just went in and did it." And all of that is foreign because you almost felt like someone has to co-sign you to make music. If you got the talent, we got the studio and the resources and you don't need a record label. That's what this generation does that we've never done.
[video=youtube;1T6cxbfdrlg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T6cxbfdrlg[/video]
Did Will think that the two of you would have to go label-hunting?
No, no. It's not that he thought that. It's just he's never done it any other way. Before I did Dayne Jordan, neither had I. So I’m sitting back like, "I own a studio and I can make music." I got a videographer on the road and we started shooting videos, so we shot a video in Dubai. Who shoots a video in Dubai besides Jay Z and Kanye? This is exactly what you would do on a Sony and now you have the resources to do it by yourself. All I did was share that information with him, like, "Dude, you know what we can do now without any boundaries?"

He mentioned having 20 to 30 songs recorded. How many of those were with you versus his solo stuff?
We haven't even gone to the studio yet. He's done all of this while he was doing Suicide Squad. So we haven't gotten in to do the stuff that we are going to do, which is next level. One of the conversations that we had was just talking about jumping. You gotta jump. If Jaden goes into the studio and he hears something hot, he records it and puts it out in 24 hours. And from the perspectives of Will and myself, you're like, "What?" I said, "You know what? Just drop it." And he kept saying, "What does 'drop it' look like?"

Will did a verse off of [Kanye West's] "Clique" when it first came out. He rapped it for me and it was huge. And I looked at him and said, "Why didn't you put that out?" And he just looked at me. I'm like, "Wait, you wrote an incredible verse off of a really popular song. That is what they do! Just drop it!" But he just sat on it.

In the Zane Lowe interview, he talked about being scared to record new music. Do you think it was fear?
I don't think it was a fear thing. He was really trying to grasp the concept of just putting it out. You got something that is hot and great and that is it. I told him to just put it on SoundCloud and you could see the wheels turning like, "Oh shit, I can really do that?" That is a very hard concept. It's like they opened the gates to the prison and nobody ran. Everybody just stood there because you are used to be incarcerated that you're like, "I'm not going to run. What if something happens?"

Is it true this will be your first world tour together?
Yeah, it's funny. When we were doing the Run-D.M.C. tour, we'd go to New York and Mobile, Alabama and do a lot of that stuff. When we got to the point of being bigger, it was during the Fresh Prince [of Bel-Air] years, so we couldn't really tour like that. We didn't have six months to just go all over the world.

Has anything been solidified for the tour?
I don't know. What I tell people is, "If Will says, 'Listen, we're going on tour,' we're going on tour." That’s my partner. Anytime he needs me, I'm there. If it's like, "Yo, we're out," we're out. Let me know so I can make some arrangements and we're gone.

Rappers and producers are finding success at older ages now more than ever before. Do you think the climate is right for a new album after more than 20 years?
The timing is perfect and it was just something that clicked. I think a lot of it is just the understanding of the space. You've got to look at it like, us, Dr. Dre, LL Cool J all came up together, and now everybody's in a different professional space, but your fanbase is still there. We are the first generation that's growing older with hip-hop. So think about it: We didn’t know how to handle that. You try to figure out: Is hip-hop the music of the youth? And it's like, yeah, it’s the music of the youth . . . when you’re young!

We didn’t have the media outlets that cater to a more adult demographic because we are the first. So now, you got Boom [classic hip-hop radio] stations and Sirius XM's BackSpin and everybody loves that. Now you got a station that plays Big Daddy Kane's "Ain't No Half-Steppin'" and "Raw," but they'll also play him if he makes something new. The outlet is finally catching up to the music. I keep saying, "Seriously, did you think Rakim lost it?" Rakim just didn't put out music because where would his music be played? There comes a time, and this is weird to say with us being hip-hop lovers, that you outgrow Hot 97.

Is it a chicken-and-egg scenario between recording the new album and booking a tour? Wouldn't one influence the other?
It's not like we don't have material to do. When we go out and perform now, we don't do new material. Now, as you get to the point that you can add new stuff on, ah man, this is great. I just think it's the perfect time. Now there are no boundaries.
 
[video=youtube;VQnOHx--AVk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQnOHx--AVk[/video]
 
iam so glad that will smith is returning (just like missy this week :D).

that fiesta track is quite nice, but there is too much Bomba Estereo. i want MORE big willie verses :D
 
Really happy that Will Smith is returning to music. He's been away from it for far too long
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">And THIS IS HAPPENING!!! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/JJFPReturn?src=hash">#JJFPReturn</a> <a href="https://t.co/9CFjp04qsW">pic.twitter.com/9CFjp04qsW</a></p>&mdash; DJ Jazzy Jeff (@djjazzyjeff215) <a href="https://twitter.com/djjazzyjeff215/status/856423505000353793">April 24, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Will Smith &amp; DJ Jazzy Jeff are reuniting for a two-night performance in Europe this August <a href="https://t.co/wcgVyfRrNu">https://t.co/wcgVyfRrNu</a> <a href="https://t.co/MCC84Qf15x">pic.twitter.com/MCC84Qf15x</a></p>&mdash; billboard (@billboard) <a href="https://twitter.com/billboard/status/857237883563933697">April 26, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Entertainment Tonight: DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince at Blackpool Aug. 27, 2016

 
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Rap Radar Ep. 39 (July 2018)

Here's a new interview by Will. In part of it, he talks about the early days of Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince in the 1980s.
 
new video
[video=youtube;--BHuKeveg4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--BHuKeveg4[/video]
[video=youtube;mzIN3l5ILFM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzIN3l5ILFM[/video]
 
Will Smith Surprises Viral Video Classmates (September 20, 2019)

Ellen welcomed high school students Kristopher and Antwain, who surprised their bullied classmate, Micheal, with new clothes and shoes. A video of the kind exchange went viral, and Ellen talked with the three teens about the inspiring gesture. Kristopher, Antwain, and Micheal not only received a gift from Ellen's friends at Shutterfly, they were stunned when Will Smith unexpectedly joined them with a surprise of his own!
 
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Reunion Trailer

30 years later, we're bringing the Banks family back together! Join Will and Tatyana Ali, Karyn Parsons, Joseph Marcell, Daphne Maxwell Reid, Alfonso Ribeiro and DJ Jazzy Jeff, for a funny and heartfelt night full of music and dancing in honor of the show that ran for six seasons and 148 episodes. Streaming November 19 on HBO Max.
 
Gen Hoshino feat. DJ Jazzy Jeff & Kaidi Tatham ~ Comedy

new
 
Will Smith & Martin Lawrence announce that Bad Boys 4 is in the works
 
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