Will Smith has admitted to a bit of swagger-jacking in his career — and revealed that his inspiration was one of the GOATs of Hip Hop.
During the GRAMMY Salute to 50 Years of Hip Hop event, which aired on Sunday (December 10), The Fresh Prince admitted that Rakim‘s flow served as a reference point for one of his best-known hits with DJ Jazzy Jeff, “Summertime.”
“‘Cause I had been screaming all night, and I couldn’t get my ‘happy-go-lucky’ high voice,” he said. “And [the producer] just said, ‘Yo, just gimme that Rakim shit.’”
Check out the clip below. Will’s confession starts at the 2:50 mark.
While many Hip Hop fans have long speculated that Smith’s raps on the song were actually written by Rakim, the GOAT shared the real deal during an interview with HipHopDX back in 2016. At the time, Eric B. — Rakim’s former rhyme partner-in-crime — had gone on The Combat Jack Show and claimed that the Grammy-winning duo was originally supposed to hop on the “Summertime” beat for a single of their own.
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Rakim emphatically denied the writing claims, but said that the story about his group having the beat first was largely true.
“Nah, it was ironic that me and Eric B. had sampled it, and we had it ready to go,” he said. “But when they came out with it, a lot of people thought it was me because of the style he used. But it was one of those things where that was them. I didn’t write it. That was Will and Jeff.”
Later, Rakim clarified that the beat itself — which sampled “Summer Madness” by Kool & The Gang — was “soft” and out-of-character for his natural baritone, so he was perfectly content with letting Will Smith run with it.
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“It was something he had on the backburner, nahmean?” he said. “Again, it was something that we wanted to use, but we felt that the time wasn’t right because of the choice of all the records that we had on the first album. But that’s a joint that you can’t deny.”
He continued: “You know, maybe it could’ve been hooked up a little more street-ready, and it was something that we thought was a hit record. But we didn’t want to come out and grasp on that first album. We was trying to ease back on that.”
