Yo back up now and give a brother room, The fuse is lit and I’m about to go boom…! The first thing that becomes immediately apparent when I press play on our next number one is that I know almost all the words. When and how this happened I don’t know, but here we are…
Boom! Shake the Room, by Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince (their 1st and only #1)
2 weeks, from 19th September – 3rd October 1993
It’s the most rap-heavy #1 so far. No sung chorus, a bit of chanting, just Big Will spitting rhymes. Or should that be ‘The Fresh Prince’. It’s easy to assume that this was a tie-in with his role in the hit sitcom, but in reality the sitcom was a tie-in for a rap career which had been going since the mid-eighties.
And while it may be the purest hip-hop chart topper thus far, I’ll make the same comment that I’ve made about almost all rap songs we’ve featured: it’s hard now not to see this as a novelty. The call and response, the lines about ‘scoring like Jordan’, the stuttering verse… All very cute, all very tame. A kids party DJ could throw this on and fear no repercussions. The closest we get to something gangsta is when Will promises to find a girl, flip her around and then work that booty…
But, it’s a lot of fun. Like I said, I know nearly all the words. I grew up with rap a lot more explicit than this (with lots of words that a person of my complexion can’t go around saying…) I’m reminded of the classic Eminem line: Will Smith doesn’t have to cuss to sell records, Well I do, So fuck him, And fuck you too… That’s funny, but it also shows where Will Smith stood in the early 2000s: commercially very successful, but an outlier in the eyes of other rappers. Back in 1993, we’re on the verge of rap becoming a dominant sound in the charts, and I really don’t know if ‘Boom! Shake the Room’ was seen as cool, or already a relic of an earlier time.
Speaking of Eminem, we’re only seven years away from him scoring a huge #1 single about having his girlfriend gagged and bound in the boot of his car. That’s a huge shift, considering that the rap songs to have made #1 have been this, one about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Vanilla Ice. While the worst swearword that’s been uttered in a number one single has been, I think, ‘bullshit’. It’ll be interesting to watch how quickly tastes and standards change in the remaining years of the 1990s.
And while you could say that Will Smith became a figure of fun, spare a thought for the guy behind the decks on this record. Initially, Jazzy Jeff was the star of the duo, with first billing here and on their early hits, with wonderful titles like ‘Parents Just Don’t Understand’ and the ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ sampling ‘Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble’. At the very start of their relationship, Smith was Jazzy Jeff’s stand-in hype-man. Come the TV series, though, Jeff had become a punchline, spending most of his time getting launched out the door by Uncle Phil. ‘Boom! Shake the Room’ was the duo’s biggest hit, in the UK at least, but it was one of their last. Will Smith went solo in 1997 (more on that soon) with Jeff producing some his songs. He’s remained very active though, performing with Smith from time to time, while one of his biggest legacies is popularising the ‘transformer scratch’, a version of which opens this record.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Sorry…I’m sure some will come up that I like!
Will pretty much became the go-to movie black superstar of massive sci-fi movies that very much appealed to me, a likeable action hero with family appeal. So, no, of course he wasn’t regarded as a valid rapper and is currently pretty unpopular following that slap. Which is bizarre when rappers literally murder people and remain popular in the current violent gun-culture that is somehow thought to be cool by morons. I think some people need to get a sense of perspective on what is very poor judgement and what is downright nasty. Me, I liked the I Dream Of Jeannie track, I still rate Summertime, and I thoroughly enjoyed this one, it’s great fun, it’s pop and that’s fine by me.
I was (ahem) already 20 when this came out. But despite being a punky indie kid at heart, I was always a big fan of pop music and followed the charts religiously until downloading and streaming obliterated them. The Fresh Prince was a goof in the show, but everyone knew that was a clever comedy act and the character was actually considered very cool – because he could laugh at himself – and by turn so was Smith. His music was considered even more cool and slick – in no way cheesy. In the autumn of 1993 everyone seemed to love this, on so many levels…from school kids to mums to respected DJs, and ‘boom shake the room’ became the phrase du jour – as was ‘boom shakalak’ was (before Sascha Baron-Cohen’s Ali G really did turn that one into a dated joke). Ah well… 😄