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Why Are People Surprised That Will Smith Can Still Rap?

The Grammy-award-winning rapper revitalized a lackluster song with his verse.

Will Smith

When Will Smith jumped on the remix of Joyner Lucas's ADHD single "Will," people were pleasantly surprised that the former could still impress.

"Will Smith can still rap," wrote one Twitter user. "Respect your elders!" Another added: "This guy is almost 50." While the reception to Smith's verse has been overwhelmingly positive, it's odd that so many fans are surprised that a decorated hip-hop veteran, with four Grammys to his name, would be anything less than exemplary this late in his career. After all, this is the same man who in the last year has hopped on multiple Spanish reggaeton tracks alongside acts like Bad Bunny, Marc Anthony, and Nicky Jam, even rapping completely in Spanish at the 2018 Latin Grammy awards.

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why are people surprised that will smith can still rap?

MUSIC

Eminem Once Said "Of Course I Side with Chris Brown" Before Collaborating With Rihanna

A 10-year-old song snippet has leaked in which the rapper said, "I'd beat a b*tch down, too," shortly before he and Rihanna recorded "Love the Way You Lie."

Eminem, Rihanna

A snippet of a song recording in which Eminem supports Chris Brown's violence towards Rihanna has leaked online.

According to XXL, the clip was recorded during the making of the rapper's 2009 album Relapse. "I'm not playing, Rihanna where'd you get the V.D. at?" Eminem says. "Let me add my two cents / Of course I side with Chris Brown / I'd beat a bitch down, too." Brown became infamous following his February 2009 assault of Rihanna, whom he was dating at the time.

"This is a leak of something that's over 10 years old," Eminem's spokesperson Dennis Dennehy told XXL. "After Eminem recorded it, he scrapped it and rewrote it. Obviously he and Rihanna have a great relationship."

But how do we know Em and Rih actually have a great relationship? Sure, the pair have collaborated on two No. 1 hits: "The Monster" and "Love the Way You Lie." But the lyrics of the latter—which were originally praised at the time of its 2010 release—become even more harrowing under the shadow of Eminem's newly-surfaced bolstering of Brown. Take his final line in the track: "If she ever tries to f**kin' leave again, I'ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire." Considering the media frenzy surrounding Rihanna's abuse shortly before the song dropped and the countless accounts of assault in the entertainment industry since, can we really trust that the supposed "greatness" of their relationship extended beyond their studio time?

And even in the decade-plus since committing the assault, Brown has still remained massively successful; he's continued to clock hit after hit, and fellow rapper Lil Dicky even wrote an entire song with him, "Freaky Friday," about what it'd be like to switch places with each other. "And then I began thinking, like, 'Who would I wanna switch bodies with?'" Dicky said of the 2018 song, which even pokes fun at Brown's "controversial past." "So the first person I thought of was Chris Brown." "Freaky Friday" is a perfect example of the subtle exoneration the music industry has granted Brown, as well as the tendency many men have to schmooze with their buddies, letting misogynistic behavior slide rather than demanding accountability.

Lil Dicky in the music video for "Freaky Friday," which features Chris Brown. Lil Dicky

Brown wouldn't still be successfully making music today if it weren't for the men that pardoned him in the wake of his headline-breaking assault. Eminem's leak might be ten years old, but the issue it exhibits is still all-too relevant in 2019. Stop giving Brown a platform, but more importantly, call out your peers' misogynistic habits before it's too late.

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Joyner Lucas and Logic Leave Their Beef Behind in New Video For "Isis"

The two lyricists put their differences aside and give the world the collaboration we've been waiting for.

Joyner Lucas is officially three-for-three with singles leading up to the release of his highly anticipated forthcoming album, ADHD.

First, he got fans hyped with the release of "I Love" in October of 2018. Then, nearly seven months later, he followed it up by criticizing God on the heavy-hitting "Devil's Work." Now, he's got a couple more tricks up his sleeve with the release of his latest video, "Isis."

The song came as a shock to those who follow hip hop closely. It features Logic, and the two emcees have periodically taken shots at one another over the last couple of years. The feud appears to be fully finished, though, and Logic briefly addresses it in his verse. He borrows and builds from Biggie when he spits, "What's beef? / Beef is brother's dyin' over shit that never mattered in the first place, lyin' in the street / What's peace? / Peace is when you leave it in the past, let it heal like a cast / When enough time pass, and you blast." Here, Logic is letting us know that he and Joyner decided to take the high road, letting bygones be bygones, nodding to Biggie (and, inadvertently, Pac) to explain why.

The song itself is everything you could hope for from the pairing of these two lyrically gifted emcees. Bar for bar, they both go hard, neither clearly outshining the other. They appear to be having a good time in the video as well – donning tactical army gear, waving around automatic weapons, and rapping on top of tanks on a military base somewhere in the Middle East.

At times, the video feels uncomfortably reductive, though, in how it seems to generalize and make light of a long and bloody history of American foreign policy blunders in the Middle East, as well as cash in on the vicious current of Islamophobia in the US. However, there is a major plot twist toward the latter half of the video that might spin these concerns into political commentary. You'll have to check it out and decide for yourself.

Check it out below, and keep an eye out for ADHD, which could drop any day now.

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Joyner Lucas Endures a Crisis of Faith in "Devil's Work" Video

Joyner confronts God for taking the good and empowering the bad in his striking new video.

Joyner Lucas soared to fame, seemingly overnight, when his chilling video for "I'm Not Racist" went viral and earned him a Grammy nomination.

But in reality Joyner has been hard at work since his days in the underground hip hop group Film Skool Rejekts, back in the mid-aughts. He had four studio albums under his belt before "I'm Not Racist" started garnering some well-deserved mainstream recognition. Oh, and an Eminem co-sign in an interview conducted by Elton John certainly didn't hurt his career either.

However, Joyner has more than earned all of the attention he's received over the last few years. He's cultivated a reputation for delivering hard-hitting, introspective, and honest bars without sacrificing anything in the way of technical skill on the mic. And in the second single off of his forthcoming album, ADHD, Joyner continues to innovate and impress.

The video for "Devil's Work" features Joyner alone in a church, accompanied only by a half-empty bottle of Hennessy, a statue of Jesus on the cross, and a serious crisis of faith. He challenges God, airing his grievances directly in a way that almost feels like he's serving up a sincere and emotionally wrought diss track to the lord, calling him out for making some questionable and unjust decisions—especially regarding which souls get taken early and which are granted positions of power. "Give us back 2Pac," he pleads, "and take that _____ Suge [...] Give us Biggie, give us Pun, give us triple X / Take that _____ Trump with you, that's a bigger threat [...] I need you to give us back Martin Luther, take Martin Shkreli / Give us back Malcolm, take R. Kelly." Joyner goes on to pay respects to a few other people who were taken too soon: Michael Jackson, Nipsey Hussle, Selina, Aaliyah, Trayvon Martin, and Emmett Till to name a few.

As one might expect given its political statements,"Devil's Work" has been met with some mixed reactions. Love it or hate it, Joyner has managed to capture a common (if under-discussed) aspect of the human experience: those long nights where we get drunk with doubt and overwhelmed by the sprawling list of senseless injustices in the world. He does so with a certain blend of honesty; raw, emotional candor; and lyrical prowess that only Joyner Lucas could deliver.

Dustin DiPaulo is a writer and musician from Rochester, New York. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University and can most likely be found at a local concert, dive bar, or comedy club (if he's not getting lost somewhere in the woods).

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