Dec 14

DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince

DJ JAZZY JEFF AND THE FRESH PRINCE
 
 
DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince  was an American hip hop duo from West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The group received the first Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance in 1989 for “Parents Just Don’t Understand” (1988), though their most successful single was “Summertime” (1991), which earned the group their second Grammy and peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.  DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince have sold over 5.5 million albums in the US.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
 
 
In the wake of the gangsta rap era, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince – Jeff Townes and Will Smith, respectively – were one of the first groups to try to tone things down with messages more suitable for teens.  Their second album, He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper (1988) was a multi-platinum smash; the charming video for their hit song, “Parents Just Don’t Understand” was in heavy rotation on MTV.  The duo had had an earlier hit in the same vein called “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble” (1986) while Will Smith was still in high school.
 
Will Smith parlayed their hit song into a stint on a sitcom called The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and later became one of the biggest movie stars of our time following roles in summer blockbusters like Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997).  He is not the only hip hop star to move to the small and/or big screen.  Ice Cube, one of the founders of gangsta rap in his group N.W.A., has starred in numerous films in a variety of genres, such as All About the Benjamins, Barbershop, and XXX: State of the Union.  Ice-T – whose debut album Rhyme Pays (1987) was “the first hip hop album to carry an explicit content sticker” (according to Wikipedia) – is well-known for his prominent role in the long-running television series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
 
(September 2016)
 
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Since I am down to a quarterly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, my annual list is a lot shorter, so I will try listing all of the people that I have discussed in some depth rather than just the Under Appreciated Rock Band and the Story of the Month. They are all punk rock bands of one kind or another this year (2015-2016), and the most recent post includes my overview of the early rap/hip hop scene that an old friend, George Konstantinow challenged me to write – probably so long ago that he might have forgotten.
 
(Year 7 Review)
Last edited: March 22, 2021