Will Smith Says He Spoke to Prince & The Notorious B.I.G. Hours Before They Died
Will Smith has a couple of eerie coincidences that he doesn’t like talking about too much.
During a sit-down with the Broken Record podcast with co-host Justin Richmond, the entertainer revealed that he talked to The Notorious B.I.G. and Prince before their untimely deaths, with his run-in with Biggie being the first time he and the Brooklyn rapper crossed paths, and it was on the night he died of gunshot wounds after a drive-by shooting in L.A.
“I don’t even want to say this out loud ’cause it’s like a terrible jinx. I met Biggie four hours before he got killed, and I talked to Prince eight hours before he died,” he said, before revealing the Minnesota icon had a business idea for him and Jay-Z.
“I talked to Prince and he was pitching, saying that me, him and Jay-Z should start an entertainment company and he said he had talked to Jay and he wanted to do it,” Smith shared. “And we talked that night, and in the morning, he was gone. I don’t know what that says about me. I’m like, ‘Oh, no. Don’t call me, don’t call me.'”
He then added, “The Biggie one made me cry, ’cause it was like stupid and it was like just centered on hip-hop — for rapping,” Smith said of the reason Big was killed. “That one hurt me. It scared me too.”
Another random fact he shared was that Too $hort‘s favorite DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince song was “You Saw My Blinker.” “When we went to Oakland and Too $hort was like, ‘That’s the one, you’ll never make nothin’ better than that,'” Smith said while mimicking the Bay Area legend’s accent.
Smith is currently rolling out Based on a True Story, his first album in more than 20 years.
You can watch the full convo below.
Angel Diaz
Billboard