The long, complicated saga of Will Smith's public life is about to enter another phase. Smith is apparently getting ready to release his first album in 20 years, and he recently teamed up with Big Sean for the Matrix-referencing single "Beautiful Scars." Now, he's got some stories to tell.
Will Smith recently did an interview with host Justin Richmond on Broken Record, a podcast that'a apparently produced by Rick Rubin and Malcolm Gladwell? Weird. Anyway. On the show, Smith talks a bit about returning to music, and he says that he's going to tour as a headliner for the first time this year. That's honestly hard to even imagine. Smith also did some of his usual motivational-speaker stuff, told Quincy Jones stories, reminisced on the early days of his rap career, and ended things on a morbid note.
Apparently, Will Smith has a bad habit of interacting with iconic figures immediately before those figures' sudden deaths. Richmond asks Smith about the old story that Smith first met Biggie Smalls on the same night that Biggie was murdered. Smith confirms that, and he says it goes deeper than that. Here's what Smith says:
I don't even want to say this out loud because it's a terrible jinx. I met Biggie four hours before he got killed, and I talked to Prince eight hours before he died. I talked to Prince; he called, and he was pitching. He was saying that me, him, and Jay-Z should start an entertainment company, and he said he had talked to Jay and he wanted to do it. We talked that night, and in the morning he was gone. I just -- I don't know what that says about me... I'm like, "Don't call me, don't call me!"
The Biggie one made me cry. Because it was, like, stupid, and it was centered on hip-hop -- like, for rapping. That one hurt me. It scared me, too. But yeah, I'm not going there.
You know what else is crazy? Will Smith talked to Chris Rock on the same night that Chris Rock got smacked.
