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Will Smith/Instagram Will Smith and Martin Lawrence
Will Smith was supposed to make his musical comeback at the Grammys on Sunday night, but had to cancel the surprise.
Originally, The Fresh Prince was supposed to be part of the 50th Anniversary Hip-Hop Performance at the 65th Grammy Awards, said Questlove, who produced the more than 10-minute performance. Variety. Host Trevor Noah previously implied there would be some surprise performances, however, Smith, 54, had to drop out after he started touring The bad boys 4.
“I’ll give away the spoiler alert. Will Smith was part of the festivities tonight, but they started shooting The bad boys 4 this week,” Questlove, 52, told Variety on the red carpet. “There was a lot of pre-shooting he had to do, so we had to lose Will.”
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Lester Cohen/Getty Images for The Recording Academy This love
Questlove detailed his process of choosing the artists he wanted to see on stage, culminating in a total of 27 minutes of performances which he eventually whittled down to 14. While he was eager for Smith to surprise the audience, he was sympathetic, adding that getting Smith is was “a shot in the dark” as the actor is “always making movies.”
The four-time Grammy winner said there were many people in the production who were also busy, and he understood their need to accommodate their schedules.
“We’ve had a lot of people, and some of them have other jobs,” he said. “[Queen] Latifah and LL [Cool J] they had to leave their respective shows to come and do that, so there were a lot of legitimate reasons why we couldn’t be all-inclusive of some people. I promise it will be great”
And it was amazing: The performance included an homage to Nelly’s 2002 “Hot in Herre,” Salt-N-Pepa and Spinderella’s 1988 “My Mike Sounds Nice,” and Busta Rhymes paired with Spliff Star to recite all the lyrics from his jump into Chris Brown’s 2011 single, “Look at Me Now”.
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Rounding out the stage of performers were Big Boi, De La Soul, Grandmaster Flash, Grandmaster Mele Mel & Scorpio/Ethiopian King, DJ Drama, Future, Ice-T, Lil Baby, Rahiem, Rakim, The Lox, Method Man, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, RUN-DMC, Too $hort, Scarface and Swizz Beatz. The performance concluded with a production of Lil Uzi Vert’s 2022 hit “Just Wanna Rock”.
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While Smith couldn’t make the show, he was reuniting with his mates Bad boy Martin Lawrence in a video posted to his Instagram Tuesday teasing the new movie. “IT’S AT THAT TIME!” read the caption.
