The 10-year drought is over, and a new Willennium has begun. After a decade away from the game, rapper-and-now-mostly-actor Will Smith has made his long-awaited return to hip-hop with a remix of “Fiesta,” a track by Colombian electro tropical ensemble Bomba Estéreo. “Couldn’t let the beat go by without a feature,” proclaims the twice-married, 47-year-old father of three. Clearly, this is an occasion to pause, reflect, and then, having reflected, celebrate. Above Average has chosen to mark the occasion with a mega mashup of the Once And Future Fresh Prince’s best-known tunes called “Will Smith’s Greatest Hits.” Actually, the thumping, cacophonous, four-minute track is less a mashup and more just a noisy jumble created by playing several Will Smith songs simultaneously. According to Above Average’s Dan Chamberlain, the track contains “the rap man’s most classic songs, all played at once to save time.”
Amid the din, the maddening, ceaseless tumult, the patient listener will definitely be able to discern several of Big Willie’s most famous platters, some of which won Grammys in their day, including “Gettin’ Jiggy With It,” “Wild Wild West,” “Men In Black,” and the theme from TV’s The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. The overall effect is less like listening to music and more like going to a multiplex theater where the sound of one movie is so loud that it leaks into the next auditorium, and in this hypothetical theater, every single screen is showing a different Will Smith movie. To people who are adept at multitasking and compartmentalizing, Smith’s music may even sound better this way. Tragically, though, no songs from Smith’s tenure as half of DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince seem to have been added to this particular bouillabaisse, so don’t expect to hear any “Parents Just Don’t Understand” or “I Think I Can Beat Mike Tyson.”