Video screens display a mock streaming service called Willflix, cycling through box office hits and prompting a shoutalong to Inner Circle's Bad Boys, setting a tone of nostalgia, high-energy set pieces and self-help sermons. Smith performs Gettin' Jiggy Wit It with six dancers in oversized jerseys, echoing his album cover attire for Based on a True Story, an album framed as a critical and commercial failure that charted his shame and acceptance after the Oscars slap. New material plays stronger live — Bulletproof and You Can Make It electrify the crowd — and pulling a statuette onstage during Work of Art creates a raw, vulnerable moment. Smith mixes theatrical showmanship, crowd interaction and earnest reflection throughout the set.
Around halfway through Will Smith's set the video screens are taken over by a mock streaming service called Willflix. The cursor cycles through box office smash after box office smash before teeing up a shoutalong to Inner Circle's Bad Boys, drawing attention to his outsized cultural footprint while also framing the night as a whole: a disorienting splurge of nostalgia, high energy set pieces and self-help sermons, channelling the tonal whiplash of watching the first five minutes of 10 films before calling it and going to bed.
Smith launches into Gettin' Jiggy Wit It, the crowd leaping and yelling each lyric as he falls into formation with six dancers dressed in outsized sports jerseys, mimicking his own Phillies cap and red starter jacket. He wore a similar get-up on the cover of his recent album Based on a True Story, a critical and commercial turkey that documented his journey into shame and acceptance post-Oscars slap, and there's friction between its stomping rap-rock soul-searching and Smith's undimmed need for everyone to have a good time when he's around.
His new material fares better live than it does on record, with a rowdy Bulletproof gilded by a shreddy guitar solo and You Can Make It cleverly turned outwards to become an audience-wide pep talk. There is a remarkable sequence during the intro to Work of Art where Smith pulls the statuette he won that night from a bag as he reels off the track's opening lines a cappella. It's wild a moment of piercing vulnerability that also recalls David Brent going home to get his guitar.
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