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Back in February 2008, Will Smith was among the attendees at ESSENCE magazine’s inaugural Black Women in Hollywood luncheon, honoring the late actress Ruby Dee, industry legend Suzanne dePasse, actress Jurnee Smollett and Smith’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith. As he passed by my table, I stopped him and asked, “When might you record a new album?”

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And he politely replied with a laugh, “I think that train has left the station.”

In sharing that memory with him during a Zoom call earlier this week about his new single and album, the Grammy winner breaks again into his signature laugh, noting, “Trains are funny like that.” Then he goes on to acknowledge, “This is a beautiful time in my life.”

That’s because of the formal announcement of Smith’s first album in more than 20 years, Based on True Story, due in March via SLANG Recordings. In tandem with that reveal came the release of his new single “Beautiful Scars” with Big Sean and featuring Obanga. Produced by OmArr and LeXoskeleton, the song was world-premiered during an iHeartRadio Live interview with Smith and is one of four singles preceding the album’s arrival.

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That rollout began last year with “You Can Make It” featuring Fridayy and Sunday Service Choir (his first No. 1 on Billboard’s Gospel Airplay chart: “My grandmother is DJing in heaven right now”), “Work of Art” with Russ and featuring Smith’s son Jaden and “TANTRUM” with Joyner Lucas. All four songs will be included on what is Smith’s most personal and introspective album to date.

That introspection is chief among the subjects that Smith delved into during his Billboard chat, which also touches on his plans to release not one but three albums under the Based on a True Story banner (which Smith describes as “three seasons of a TV musical show”), the writers and producers he’s been collaborating with and performing live over the coming year. He most recently performed two sold-out shows in December in San Diego at The Observatory North Park. And Smith is already booked to headline France’s 2025 Positiv Festival on July 31.

“Getting back out city to city, seeing people and feeling the energy keeps me creatively alive,” says the Philadelphia native and fervent fan of the Super Bowl-bound Eagles (“It’s time for my Eagles; we’re unbeatable”). “Like how they’re doing the kick drums a little different in Chicago than in other places; like what’s happening with Afrobeats. I’m excited to go around the world and meet artists. I’m more artistic than I’ve ever been, a better actor than I’ve ever been, a better poet than I’ve ever been … I’m going to be better on stage than I’ve ever been. I’m just on fire about this next creative phase of my life and career.”

What prompted your decision to record a new album?

It started with [2022 film] Emancipation. It was a drama set during slavery, the first time I really did a deep dive on that period in America. So I go into this character, getting a really profound comprehension of the relationship between God and suffering. People in those circumstances were generally spiritual; you have to be to survive those circumstances. So I’m in this character and it was miserable making a film like that, getting called n—a all day long. Then Covid hit and I had to be in that character, live in that space longer than I thought. Three to four months turned into almost a year. And that had never happened to me as an actor before. I started having dreams as the character.

That’s a long way to say that a well opened up inside of me, a well of understanding of art and pain … all kinds of things that I didn’t even know were in there. Then after the Oscars, that spiritual investigation continued and a whole world woke up inside that I didn’t even know was there. Dreams, visions; parts of my inner landscape that I had no awareness of prior to three years ago. And that opened up this bubbling to share what I’m seeing and experiencing, to explore. A big part of my music now is about that: the ecstatic kind of joy I remember from church when I was growing up; the ability to try to make this place more bearable. You know, I’ve always had a wild imagination; that’s part of who I am. But there’s something new happening with me that’s demanding I explore musically.

Talk about the origin of “Beautiful Scars.”

Sometimes it can seem like the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, that’s completely unsurvivable, can turn out to be one of the most magnificent experiences of our lives. And that was the fun of doing The Matrix-inspired video. That’s one of the beautiful scars of my career that I turned down. There’s also a Japanese art called Kintsugi: instead of throwing away broken dishes, they paint them with gold. And they make the “broken dish” become even more beautiful than the original. That’s the concept of “Beautiful Scars.”  That there’s a real process of transformation and alchemy in any situation. Like healing is art and creating a life is an artistic process. Learning to love the parts of ourselves that others might deem ugly. Somebody might call it a scar. But we see it as beautiful, something that will be one of the greatest assets of our lives going forward.

Big Sean and Will Smith

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What were you looking for in choosing the collaborators for these first four songs?

It’s people who were with me during my difficult time after the Oscars. Joyner was one of the first people to reach out and offer whatever help he could. So this first round of collabs are friends and allies.

How did you land on the title Based on a True Story?

I’ve probably recorded 60 songs by now, so I was trying to come up with one name for the whole body of work. I’m talking so many different tempos and energy: there’s a gospel record, then a hardcore hip-hop record. It was about just letting whatever come out in a really wild, colorful and varied way. What I decided to do is separate the material into seasons like a television show. So I’m releasing three seasons of this television musical show and calling the 10 tracks for each season “episodes” instead of songs. The first season is called Rave in the Wasteland. The actual date hasn’t been picked yet, but I’m releasing season one at the end of March. It’s about the idea of learning to dance in your darkest moment. It’s also all the things I wrote directly after the Oscars. The second season is called The Gift of Madness and that’s a Quincy Jones quote. Quincy was doing an interview once where somebody said Quincy, you’ve picked Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey and Will Smith. What did you see in those people in seed form? And Quincy said all three of them have the gift of madness, that they believe impossible shit can happen. So season two’s music lends itself to that: belief and possibilities, much more upbeat and joyful. We’re looking to release that in June. For yet-untitled season three, we’re looking at the end of the year.

On the writing and production side, what other collaborators did you bring on board?

I’m working with two young writers/rappers that were a big part of working with Joyner: Chiller and Symba. They’re sitting with me on every single track, making sure I’m getting my ideas out right, helping me transition to current flows, track selection and all of that. They’re keeping me from going too old school. There’s also my longtime friend OmArrRambert. We grew up on the same block together and he was a dancer for DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. Then when I did The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, he was a big part of all the wardrobe looks on the show. His first shot at producing was working on [Smith’s 1997 debut solo album] Big Willie Style. The first song that he executive produced was “Men in Black” for which he found The Trackmasters [production duo Poke & Tone]. Now this is the first project that he’s solely executive producing.

When you stepped back into recording, what advice did your children Jaden and Willow give you?

Jayden was like, “Dad, just don’t waste a lot of time thinking about it. Write it, record it, release it. Don’t get so precious that you don’t put it out.” He also said just release singles. That was really hard for me as I like to have a complete thought, a body of work. And Willow kept telling me, “Dad, don’t try to make hits. Just make what you think and feel. And if it’s a hit, it’s a hit. If it’s not, it’s not. Focus on expression and not trying to have it land in a certain way.” What I learned is that that’s how you can start to be contrived as an artist. I want to be free. That was one of the difficulties having a No. 1 gospel record. I was like, “Oh, no. I’m not going to be allowed to do all the other stuff I want to do.” So I’m trying to stay open to explore and create honestly, to give myself the freedom to embrace my full humanity.

Beyond the festival in France this summer, are you planning to tour in support of the new album?

I’ve never done a full tour. Everybody I say that to thinks, “Well no, you must have done a tour before as DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince.” We did do dates on tours. But we had our big single in 1988 [“Parents Just Don’t Understand”] and we won the Grammy in 1989. Then Fresh Prince of Bel-Air started in 1990. I was shooting that for nine months out of the year for the next six years. So I’ve never actually built a stage and done a tour. I am excited about the combination of absolute nostalgia that people feel with songs like “Miami,” “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” and “Summertime,” then being able to make a show, which is the idea for Based on a True Story. So I’m starting outside of the country this summer; my getting in shape. My dream is to work my way into a stadium tour. I’ll probably do arenas this year and next year to see can I build a big enough, exciting enough show to require a stadium run. I have gigantic ideas about staging, using music, acting and screens — I’ve had a show in my mind for almost a decade, So I’m excited, in terms of the new technology, to finally be able to build this thing I’ve been seeing in my head.

Given your musical legacy, what matters most to you as an artist now?

The highest pleasure for me is to watch people listen, clap, cry or be riveted by the creation of a memorable moment. At the end of the day, what you want is people being able to say, “Remember that time when…?” and the recalling of the memory is as ecstatic as the initial experience. Music really has a way to do that. Movies definitely can do it, but not the way music can. When you hit that corresponding vibration in somebody’s heart with a song, it’s a whole different kind of thing.