Questlove had a tall order in pulling together the mind-bending 14-minute tribute to hip-hop history at Sunday night’s (Feb. 5) 2023 Grammy Awards. Tasked with telling the story of the genre that has given him a career and produced some of the most iconic music and performers of the past half-century, the Roots drummer looked far-and-wide — from the West coast to the East coast, over to Philly and down to Atlanta and beyond — to ensure that the breadth of the genre was well-represented.
There’s one voice, though, that did not make it to the stage to perform alongside Big Boi, Ice-T, Missy Elliott, Lil Baby, Method Man, Future, De La Soul, Grandmaster Flash, Run-DMC and the other legends. Quest told Variety that he invited Will Smith to make a special surprise appearance at the event that featured Smith’s longtime musical partner DJ Jazzy Jeff — who rocked the bells with LL Cool J — but that the rapper-turned-actor had to back out due to the filming scheduled for his fourquel, Bad Boys 4.
“I’ll give the spoiler alert away. Will Smith was a part of the festivities tonight, but they started shooting Bad Boys 4 already this week,” Quest said on the red carpet, where he revealed that the “all-inclusive” vibe he was looking for in the segment originally came in at 27 minutes before producers asked him to cut in way down. “There’s a lot of preliminary shots that he had to do, so we had to lose Will. That was gonna be a surprise moment.”
Quest said the invite was “a shot in the dark,” and that he understood the no-show because, “he’s always shooting movies. We had a lot of people and some of them have other jobs.” For example, he noted that the Roots had to get former David Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer to fill-in for them on The Tonight Show last week so that they could prepare for Sunday night’s rap tribute.
While Smith was ultimately a scratch, if he had flown in it would have been the Oscar-winner’s first awards show appearance since last year’s shocking incident at the 2022 Oscars where he slapped comedian Chris Rock — shortly before Questlove accepted an Academy Award for best documentary for his film Summer of Soul. Last week Smith announced that he and Martin Lawrence will be re-teaming for Bad Boys 4.
