Page 29 - Will Smith: A Biography of a Rapper Turned Movie Star

He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper
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neighborhoods make these people less black? Will and Jeff ’s
goal was to broaden rap’s appeal. “We want to bring rap out
of the ghetto,” Will said.6
Some years later, Smith explained why he felt it necessary
to keep profanity and mean-spiritedness out of his music:
“Rap music—people can act like it’s not—but rap music is
for kids. You know it’s completely directed at children and
impressionable minds and I just think it’s dangerous to
pump that kind of cavalier misogyny [hatred of women] and
hatred in young minds.”7 Even though some critics had
accused “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble” of being sexist,
the song was very mild compared with some hard-edged rap
that truly degraded women.
Will and Jeff were not the first musical artists to broaden
the appeal of rap. In 1986, a New York rap trio called Run-
D.M.C. had teamed up with two white musicians from the
rock band Aerosmith—lead singer Steve Tyler and lead
guitarist Joe Perry—to record a rap version of Aerosmith’s hit
“Walk This Way.” The song was a big hit and reached number
four on Billboard magazine’s national Hot 100 chart.8
By now, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince had taped
plenty of songs that they were aching to release. The next
logical step was to put out an album. The success of their hit
single drew attention from record companies bigger than
the Philadelphia-based Word Up. These companies had
bigger networks and could distribute records to more music
stores than Word Up. So Smith and Townes left Word Up
and signed with Jive Records.