When you have embarrassed yourself in front of the entire world, as Will Smith did during the 2022 Oscars, you find yourself confronted with two choices. Either you can slink off embarrassed and wait however long it takes for the furore to die down, or you can make an entire album about it.
You probably don’t need to be told which option Smith took.
The first plays of his new album Based on a True Story have started to air, and it’s starting to look like an awful lot of it is about the moment when he interrupted the Academy Awards to approach Chris Rock, slap him, return to his seat and scream at Chris Rock, before winning an Oscar later and giving the most deranged speech in the history of the awards.
According to Variety, the first track on the album – entitled Int Barbershop – Day – immediately addresses the slap. After the first words spoken on the album announce that “Will Smith is cancelled,” voices trade lines such as “Who the fuck Will Smith think he is?” and “I ain’t never going to forgive him for that shit he did.” Then Smith starts rapping, with lines like, “I heard he won the Oscar but he had to give it back / And you know they only made him do that shit because he’s Black,” and “Him and Jada both crazy girl, what you talkin’ bout ?/ You better keep his wife’s name out of your mouth.”
The second song, You Lookin’ for Me? continues to elaborate on the subject, with the line, “Took a lot, I’m back on top / Y’all gon’ have to get acclimated / Won’t stop, my shit still hot / Even though I won’t get nominated.”
What a lot of information to try to parse. On the one hand, Smith has every right to address what happened three years ago, it would almost be weird if he didn’t. To see him release another album of lightweight hip-hop that blankly refused to acknowledge that the slap ever happened would be baffling. It would be like, well, watching him dancing to Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It at the Vanity Fair party hours after exploding his career in front of millions of people.
On the other hand, would it be too much to ask for a little factual accuracy? While Smith did win an Oscar for King Richard on Slap Night, he was never actually asked to return it, although he was penalised in other ways. But then again, “I heard he won the Oscar but was subsequently banned from attending any events connected to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a decade / Plus he voluntarily resigned his Academy membership and later released a statement where he described himself as ‘deeply remorseful’ for letting everybody down on what should have been their big night” – probably lacks the syntax to become a memorable hip-hop track.
Still, hopefully this draws a definitive line underneath the incident. After all, it took Rock a year to meaningfully comment on the slap, which he did during a blisteringly angry tirade at the end of his live Netflix special Selective Outrage, in which he reframed Smith’s loss of control as a reaction to Jada Pinkett Smith’s decision to publicly discuss the messy ins and outs of their marriage. And now Smith has had his turn, by admitting in song that he is unlikely to receive an Oscar nomination for his role in Bad Boys: Ride Or Die.
Is that as good as a thorough, clear-eyed explanation of what still seems like a moment of dangerous instability? No. Is the acknowledgment particularly satisfying? No. Does it let Smith off the hook? Also no. But at least it’s something.
All the parties have now had their say. And this means we can all detach ourselves from the slap and let it be what it is; the second weirdest thing to happen during the Oscars, after Rob Lowe singing Proud Mary with Snow White. Finally, we can start the important work of taking the slap out of our mouths.
