On “Tantrum,” one of the most visceral moments from Will Smith’s new album Based on a True Story, the 56 year-old growls, “Oh, y’all forgot I ain’t new with the pen/First hip-hop Grammy, I’ll do it again.” With an album as trite as this one, that’s hard to imagine, but that sort of flex is true to the spirit of the genre he’s helped mold and the type of shit-talking he’s absolutely earned the right to.
For long after the Oscars in 2022, where Smith stormed the stage and slapped host Chris Rock after the comedian made a distasteful joke about his wife’s shaved head, many seemed to reduce his momentous career to that unwieldy act. Yet, from that historic first hip-hop Grammy, to his immortal sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, to starring roles in scores of blockbusters, and his children becoming two of music’s most interesting young prodigies, Will Smith remains one of the most consequential figures in pop culture. So, on his first album in 20 years, when he informs us, “I been on your mind for a very long time,” in the creeping “You Looking for Me,” or claims his “mirrors on the wall worth half a billi’/’Cause I’m a icon,” in the spirited “Beautiful Scars,” they’re the moments that resonate.
Smith’s acting chops are vibrant on Based on a True Story, right from an opening skit where Smith, his lauded DJ, Jazzy Jeff, and comedian B. Simone play barbershop gossips debating his merit. “You better keep his wife’s name out of your mouth,” one neighbor warns in a much needed moment of lightheartedness. The skit cunningly notes that a lot of what has been said about Smith wouldn’t be said to his face and taps nearly four decades of comedy prowess. He works his way from his retro, Fresh Prince flow there and on “You Looking for Me” to ones that mirror Drake, Rick Ross, and Migos, stepping into the contemporary sound of hip-hop. “Beautiful Scars” and the penultimate “Work of Art” play with the Philly and Jersey club drums that dominated his hometown in the mid-2000s and resurged in recent years too. All of this points to a man straddling generations with something to say to each of them.
Unfortunately, most of the album deals in cringey, gospel-tinged, platitudinous rap that universalizes his lessons from the Slap and the Pinkett-Smith-Cinematic-Universe, including the couples’ rocky marriage and superfluous critiques of their parenting. Despite his palpable conviction over those club drums on “Beautiful Scars,” with his raw, rapid fire testimony “You are the one in a million, billion/You are the answer, you are the power, you are the principle/Every second that you’re livin’ is pivotal/Anything that’s broken is remixable,” Smith often sounds clunky and dated. Without experimenting with more character, slickness, or charisma in his delivery, his voice is too familiar and conversational. Clichés like beautiful scars and people being works of art abound. So too does therapy speak, like Smith rapping that his “Inner child been throwing a tantrum/I took my traumas and made it an anthem.” Without clearer insights and innovation, these tropes actually depersonalize his revelations.
There are moments of resonant vulnerability here, like when Smith, playing an interstitial reverend, preaches that “Everybody is having a hard time…And you have the opportunity and the responsibility to be the one that pulls them back from the edge/Not the one that pushes them over.” It’s clear he knows this from experience. But Based On True Story is more often overwrought with inspirational jargon and production so dramatic it becomes unserious, like when that same reverend’s voice echoes as he calls us to “[Look] into the eyes of the dragon and say, ‘Not today!’” over bleating organs.
We share the blame in this. The Slap became so incessant and overblown that the reflections that dominate Smith’s new album are a natural and healthy response to such intense public shaming. Smith faced the consequences of his hot-headed attack with a level of accountability many of his peers in Hollywood could stand to learn from. Scarred by a violent upbringing himself, he issued a thorough apology the next day and more to Rock and the public in the following months. He resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, calling the Slap “inexcusable” and acknowledging that the hurt he caused reverberated beyond his victim. He did not challenge the 10-year ban the Oscars bestowed on him in a punishing statement. Yet, the same Academy that supposedly rebukes all violence is currently facing backlash for failing to directly condemn the reported lynching and jailing of Palestinian Oscar winner Hamdan Ballal by Israeli settlers and authorities.
As the Slap discourse raged, the incident was made out to be about much more than extremely poor decisions by two grown men (like ableism, racism, even war), and it was lucrative to do so. “Social media platforms aim to perfect strategies for keeping your attention, and media companies try to successfully compete for your interest,” wrote Mashable’s Rebecca Ruiz in response to the inescapable influx of coverage. It makes sense that the Slap and its fallout is inescapable on Based On a True Story as well, but the regrettable result is a rap album that would function better as an addendum to his memoir or another sit-down with Trevor Noah. That’s not just because of the reckoning that forces the record’s hand. That is also because, in 2025, Will Smith is proving himself a better storyteller than rapper.
