Big Willie Style (Will Smith)
The Fresh Prince goes solo — and takes over the planet. 'Gettin' Jiggy Wit It,' 'Miami,' 'Just the Two of Us': radio-owning, profanity-free hip-hop from the guy who was simultaneously the biggest movie star alive. Nineteen ninety-eight belonged to Will.
By late 1997, Will Smith had already lived two full careers — five albums as half of DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, then Hollywood megastardom via Bad Boys, Independence Day, and Men in Black. Big Willie Style, released November 25, 1997 on Columbia with Trackmasters (Poke & Tone) executive-producing and Jazzy Jeff still in the credits, was his first album under his own name — and it turned the movie-star victory lap into a wall-to-wall radio residency. The album peaked at number eight on the Billboard 200 but simply refused to leave, logging 99 weeks on the chart on its way to a 9× Platinum certification in the US.
The singles were a conveyor belt. 'Gettin' Jiggy Wit It' became Smith's first Billboard Hot 100 number one in 1998 and put a new phrase in the national vocabulary. 'Just the Two of Us' reframed the Bill Withers classic as a father-son letter to his boy Trey — it won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video in 1998. 'Miami,' riding The Whispers' 'And the Beat Goes On,' went top 20 and won the same VMA the following year (with a young Eva Mendes in the video). The album also carried 'Men in Black' — technically born on the film's soundtrack — which won Smith the 1998 Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance; 'Gettin' Jiggy Wit It' repeated the feat in 1999, giving the album era back-to-back Grammys.
Critics were split — some heard irresistible pop craft, others heard hip-hop with the edges sanded off — and that was exactly the point. Smith rapped clean, no profanity, over gleaming disco and soul samples, and became the artist parents and kids agreed on. Big Willie Style is the sound of the late 90s' most bankable human being operating at full wattage: jiggy, in a word, and completely inescapable.
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