Will Smith has entered the phoenix era of his career, having risen from the ashes of his personal life being internet fodder and the fallout from the infamous 2022 Oscar slap. Nearly two decades have flown by since the box office juggernaut released his fourth solo studio album, Lost & Found, in 2005. Now, he’s back with renewed energy for music.
Smith debuted his new song “You Can Make It” featuring Fridayy and Sunday Service Choir when he performed at the 2024 BET Awards. In July, he joined forces with his son Jaden and rapper Russ for the track “Work of Art.” His return to his Hip Hop roots was a surprise to fans, but for the veteran entertainer, it was more like the inevitable, or a means of him working through life’s ups and downs that have transpired in the last two years.
On Sept. 28, in a new video uploaded to his YouTube page aptly titled “The truth about making music again,” he explained exactly what moved him to get back in the booth. He first shared, “You know, the last couple years of my life have been pretty transformative,” before revealing that, “songs and ideas and truth started pouring in from all kinds of angles. I just started to see life differently. I started to see love differently. I started to see suffering differently.”
He continued, “I just couldn’t stop it. I just couldn’t stop the lyrics from coming, I was just dreaming songs. I just became brand new.” The eight-minute video takes viewers behind the scenes and into rehearsal for his Smith’s BET performance, interspersed with scenes of him speaking with an off-camera producer about his evolution as an entertainer converging with his persona as a music artist.
In short, the Bad Boys: Ride or Die actor is clear that he has entered a new act of his career, one where he is no longer hyper-focused on rejecting negative energy, but instead, “This next phase of my artistic life is going to be embodying the shadow.”
Moreover, Smith shared that, “With ‘You Can Make It,’ my hope is that there’s that little touch of inspiration, that it just hits the space where for even a brief moment you believe that there is a light, there is a higher place to reach.” The Hollywood superstar previously hinted at preparing a new body of work this summer. Though he has not confirmed a title or release date, he did reveal that “the idea of the music is [to] dance in your darkest moments.”