Don't look now, but 'Parents Just Don't Understand' is 25 years old

Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the release of He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper from Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff. As Jazzy gets set to help close fluid night club and Smith's After Earth (with son, Jaden) set to hit theaters early this summer, Jeff dished to Philly Weekly about what it was like at the beginning, when their second album blew up while they were on tour with Public Enemy.

The cover story includes interesting anecdotes like the time Will tried to cut Jeff's cast off with a butter knife. Or the first time Will tried to get fans to help rap "Parents Just Don't Understand" in concert. It's also got the details about the Grammys boycott and what it was like to return to Southwest Philly after the tour.

We sat in the studio and compiled all of the records and started mixing it and tried to figure out what we wanted to put out first. We were trying to do something that was a little bit harder, with some scratches in it, maybe some human beatbox stuff, and I remember one of the producers who was working with us saying, "'Parents Just Don't Understand' should be the first single."

Me and Will were like, "No, no, no, no, no." And he was just like, "I'm telling you, 'Parents Just Don't Understand' is a smash hit."

That song and that album helped put the duo on the map. Now that Will is too good for awesome roles in Tarantino films, it's worth a few minutes to check out the whole feature. It's look back at what helped to get things started a quarter of a century ago. [Philly Weekly]