The phenomenon that is Will Smith, AKA The Fresh Prince, has gone from unique rapper, to actor, to actor that raps, to pop phenomenon, to lately just an actor that raps every so often. But this latest album, Lost And Found, seems to be an example of every single stage in Will’s career. You have the party joints, the rare personal songs, and the deep songs that we haven’t seen very often in Smith’s music. Unfortunately Will Smith doesn’t seem to be very original in any of his songs on any level.
The best song on the album is “Tell Me Why” (ft. Mary J. Blige) which seems to be Will’s version of the Jadakiss’ hit “Why,” but obviously not very original. Unfortunately the emotion exhibited in Smith’s voice seems to be a little forced. It seems like he felt that he needed to have as much passion as possible so he tried to use his acting skills to fool everyone to think that these lyrics were incredibly personal to him. Sure, they were probably very personal and it’s obvious he must have had an incredible passion when writing them, but this wasn’t conveyed well in the final product. The highlight to the track is Mary J’s emotion, which has never had to be forced. Blige rips this track with her beautiful vocals, which probably contributes to the fact that it’s easy to see through Will’s forcing of his emotion. That’s not to say that the lyrics aren’t great, however, the delivery simply doesn’t do the words justice.
Another very intriguing track that unfortunately doesn’t live up to it’s potential is “Loretta,” a personal story that obviously affected Smith because of the crazy nature of the subject of the story. This seems to be Will Smith’s version of Eminem’s “Stan.” Basically Will described the development of the mentality of a crazed fan that had illusions of being with him. This is an incredibly intriguing song throughout all the verses, but then after the last part of the song, it leaves the listener expecting a resolution. The end of the song didn’t seem like it was completing the story, it seemed as if there should have been another part to the song that would bring a conclusion. Unfortunately the song ends too abruptly and seems to leave the listener hanging without actually describing what finally ends up happening to “Loretta.”
With his latest release, Will Smith seems to unfortunately be completely the opposite of the title of the album, where he is completely lost and not found at all. It seems on this release that he is diverging even further away from that which is his natural style and tries to gain notoriety from being something that he is not. Smith will always be someone that is more of a pop superstar, but if there were anytime that he could have broken out of that mould it would have been with this release since he decided to diversify his subject matter. However, as mentioned above, Will Smith is just not fit for this type of change in subject matter. Or course you have to give him credit for trying especially since he is not doing this to try to make money when he’s a man that makes $20 Million with every movie he makes. He is obviously doing the music because he has incredible love for it, but it just doesn’t work for this album. |