Big Willie style is back in action.
Will Smith has announced his return to music. The “West Philadelphia born-and-raised” rapper and actor who rose to fame in the late 1980s as one-half of the musical duo DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, has not released an album under his own name since 2005′s Lost and Found.
That will change next week, when Smith returns as a solo artist with Based On a True Story, a 14-track album that comes out on March 28 on Slang Records. The set features contributions from Smith’s old partner Jeffrey Townes, plus Fridayy, Teyana Taylor, Big Sean, Joyner Lucas, and Smith’s son Jaden Smith.
Smith, who made his solo debut with 1997′s Big Willie Style, which produced the signature hit “Gettin’ Jiggy wit It,” teased the project with the single “Beautiful Scars” earlier this year.
The album, with a cover that photographs Smith outfitted in a Phillies jacket and cap, will also include “You Can Make It,” a song he released with Fridayy and the Sunday Service Choir last year.
In January, Smith told Billboard that the album was shaped by soul searching that began during the filming of the 2022 movie The Emancipation. It continued, he said, in the aftermath of the incident at that year’s Oscars ceremony in which he slapped Chris Rock during the live broadcast after the comedian mocked Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith.
“After the Oscars, that spiritual investigation continued and a whole world woke up inside that I didn’t even know was there. Dreams, visions; parts of my inner landscape that I had no awareness of prior to three years ago,” Smith told Billboard.
“And that opened up this bubbling to share what I’m seeing and experiencing,” said Smith, who narrated the “In Memoriam” segment for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air executive producer and his mentor Quincy Jones, at this year’s Grammy Awards.
“A big part of my music now is about that: the ecstatic kind of joy I remember from church when I was growing up; the ability to try to make this place more bearable. You know, I’ve always had a wild imagination; that’s part of who I am. But there’s something new happening with me that’s demanding I explore musically.”
Smith has also announced his “Based On a True Story” tour, which kicks of in Rabat, Morocco on June 25 and carries on in Europe through the summer, culminating in Paris on Sept. 2. North American dates have not been announced. Tickets details are not yet available, but fans can sign up for early access at willsmith.com/#tour