Page 33 - Will Smith: A Biography of a Rapper Turned Movie Star

He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper
33
Rock the House sold six hundred thousand copies, a hit
by any standards.10 The high sales netted the rappers their
first Gold Record. For Will, that put an end to the question
of going to college: He was on the road to stardom. Although
his parents were disappointed, they were now ready to let
Will follow his dreams. If he was to have any further
education, it would be in the rough world of show business.
Smith and Townes got busy on a second album. Rap
music might seem easy to write, because it uses borrowed
beats and what appears to be simple poetry. But writing rap is
harder than people might expect. Townes once described the
process: “The hardest part of making records is always
coming up with a concept, and we would sit in a room for
days just wondering what we were going to talk about and
trying to come up with something. But once we came up with
a topic, then the rest of the song would come within about
fifteen or twenty minutes. We would bounce ideas off each
other. I would pretty much do the music and we would lay the
rap over the top of it. And then he would kind of tweak it.”11
DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s next album came out
in 1988. It was the album He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, with the
song “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” which earned them
their first Grammy. The record is more technologically
advanced and musically creative than Rock the House, but the
subject matter is similar. In “Parents Just Don’t Understand,”
Will sings about how embarrassing it is to shop with one’s
parents, and how he got in trouble for taking his parents’ car
without their permission. The song “Nightmare on My