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“Parents Just Don’t Understand” – DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
(Words/music: Pete Harris/Will Smith/Jeff Townes, available on He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, Jive 1988)

Will Smith made his career by embracing absurdity.  The early stages of his career involved crafting this larger-than-life persona – a sort of self-caricature of Will Smith rechristened “The Fresh Prince.”  It made “Parents Just Don’t Understand” work at least.  The beat sounds like a Run DMC castoff (or, perhaps more appropriately, something in the vein of “Christmas in Hollis”), and it’s hard to think of someone like LL Cool J doing such a goofy song.  Smith embraces it and dives in head first, not only telling a tale of intergenerational misunderstanding, but by punctuating his story with a series of ridiculous details.  He could summarize the first verse as “my mom bought me wack clothes, made me wear them in public, and made me the laughing stock of the school” (and, if he did it today, would end it with a hearty “FML”), but instead he goes into all of the specifics.  He drops a reference to Sha Na Na, describes pants as “double-knit trousers,” and garnishes his rhymes with hyperbole all over the place.  Whether it’s to help win us over to his plight or another brick to build up his persona, it’s this open silliness that makes “Parents Just Don’t Understand” feel fun and, for lack of a better word, youthful.

Still, listening to it tonight, I noticed a line at the end of the second “tale” (the one where the Prince takes his parents’ car out to cruise for girls, gets caught without a license, and fears his parents’ reaction over his stint in the slammer) that I must have skipped before.  Stuck between his plea to the officer and his arrest, Smith shares that his new lady friend is “a twelve year-old runaway.”  It seems like a one-off line – Smith gets arrested but it seems implied it’s for driving without a license – but in the context of the song, particularly the details of the girl trying to seduce him, it’s hard to ignore.  I realize that Smith is in persona here and rhyming from the perspective of a non-licensed teen, perhaps fifteen, but it’s the extreme nature of the detail (making her considerably younger) that is hard to ignore.  I realize Smith’s using exaggeration for effect, but it’s still hard not to find it a little uncomfortable.

More on DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm