Will Smith recently sat down with Sway in the Morning hosts Sway Calloway, Heather B, and Tracy G at the Hard Rock Cafe in Philadelphia to discuss his highly anticipated new album, Based on a True Story.
During the interview, Smith shared insights into the creative process behind the project, including the advice he received from Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar that ultimately influenced the album’s title. He also reflected on his personal journey, explaining how deep self-reflection over the past few years led him to embrace a more vulnerable and authentic approach to storytelling.
Will Smith on His Creative Process and Personal Growth
Sway Calloway: And when I listen to this project, I hear Will Smith, the MC.
Will Smith: Yeah, for sure.
Sway Calloway: The poet. What was the circumstances, the environment surrounding this project that makes it so different than the ones in the past? You know, did you have any distractions while making this project?
Will Smith: No. So, you know, what happened is that over the last couple of years, I really went internal. I did some deep inward searching—really isolating myself more than ever before. I spent more time alone in the past three years than at any other point in my life.
I got in touch with what I call the despicable prisoners—those parts of myself I didn’t want people to see. The Will Smith people knew was the Instagram version: smiling, happy, hardworking—the image I wanted to present to the world. But there were other sides of me that I suppressed.
Over the past three years, I made the decision to stop running from those parts. Instead of avoiding, medicating, or masking my emotions, I confronted them—fear, anger, sadness, confusion—head-on. And something magical happened.
If you can imagine suppressing anger for years, then finally allowing it to surface, it’s like a dam breaking open. And beneath that, all these creative energies started flowing—poetry, music, and ideas I had never tapped into before. It was like a geyser of new inspiration. Suddenly, I could rap the way I had always wanted to.
By embracing every part of myself—the good, the bad, and the complicated—I unlocked a whole new creative energy. Now, when I step into the booth, sometimes I don’t even know what I’m going to say. It’s an exploration, a discovery in real time.