Will

When he is a young boy, Smith sees his father hit his mother so hard that she collapses. For his whole life since then, he has apologized to his mother for failing to protect her at that moment. He sees himself as a coward for failing to act. He explains that Smith is largely a character he has created to hide his cowardice. 

Smith describes his father as a source of both great inspiration and great pain. Willard went to a boarding school as a teenager, but he purposefully got himself kicked out and joined the military. There he learned discipline and order, two concepts that would help him throughout his entire life. His anger and his drinking, however, hindered his success. He was discharged after he shot up his barracks one night while drunk. He then went back to school and got a job at a steel mill before deciding to start his own refrigeration business.

Smith’s mother, Carolyn Elaine Bright, was a highly educated woman who believed that “knowledge was the only thing that the world couldn’t take away from you” (4). Mom-Mom, as Smith calls her, was living with Smith’s grandmother, Gigi, when she met Willard. She was attracted to his ambition and his humor. The two got married and worked together to build Willard’s business. 

Gigi works a graveyard shift so she can be home with Smith during the day when his parents work. Smith’s twin siblings, Harry and Ellen, are eventually added to the family. Daddio works hard, and he is able to purchase the family a home in Wynnefield, a neighborhood in west Philadelphia with a strong community and many children. Smith says that his middle-class upbringing will eventually lead to the criticism he received as a rapper for not being in gangs or on drugs. 

Daddio takes a militaristic approach to raising his children, always demanding perfection. He uses fear, as Smith says most Black families do, to protect his children. Daddio wants to prepare his children to face a tough world, but his parenting style also cultivates an atmosphere of anxiety. Because Smith is constantly afraid in his home, he becomes hypervigilant, paying attention to every detail around him. He will continue to do this later in his life.

His mother is not one to allow herself to be commanded, and she maintains that while Willard is capable of hitting her, he is not capable of hurting her. She refuses to stay silent. His younger brother, Harry, also stands up to his father, and Pam, his older sister, acts like a bodyguard for Will. Smith sees himself as a family coward. To make up for it, he decides to be funny. He believes that if he can keep his father laughing, they will all be safe.

Smith has a vivid imagination as a child, and he often makes up fantastic stories about what happens to him. He thrives when he can share the products of his imagination with others. Other children, however, begin to see Smith as a liar because of his fantastic stories. He develops an imaginary friend named Magicker. Smith has a lot of confidence and does not care much what others think. When everyone else wants a Huffy bike, he wants a Raleigh Chopper. Since he has what he describes as a “delusional level of confidence,” he does not care when other people make fun of him (24). 

Smith’s fantasies result in heartache when they conflict with reality, but they also protect him from reality. For example, he fantasizes that he can keep his father happy enough to protect his mother. His belief that he is a coward is exacerbated when he sees a young girl go into the home of a known sex offender and he is too terrified to tell an adult. Magicker keeps telling him to tell someone, and when he does not, he never sees his imaginary friend again.

Smith and Gigi are mesmerized by a performance by Reverend Ronald West at the Resurrection Baptist Church. After seeing Gigi so moved by the performance, Smith decides that he wants to be able to make people feel the way the reverend does. Gigi is highly religious and lives out the gospel more than anybody else Smith has ever met. One day, a homeless woman walks down the street, and Gigi invites the woman inside, cleans her clothes, gives her a meal, bathes her, and gives her some of her own clothes. Caring for others is an honor for Gigi. Where Daddio represents discipline and Mom-Mom represents education, Gigi represents God and love to Smith. One day, Gigi tells Smith that he must perform on the piano at the Easter church service. Smith does not believe that he is ready, but she convinces him. He is so moved by the look in her eyes when he performs that he spends the rest of his life trying to find that look again. 

Smith begins to realize that he is straddling the white and Black worlds, growing up in a Black neighborhood but going to a predominantly white Catholic school. This dichotomy affects him later on as a rapper when white audiences find him safe but Black audiences see him as being too soft. As a child, he uses his humor to protect him in both Black and white environments.

When Will is 13 years old, his mother leaves his father, and Harry moves in with his mother. Still, Smith continues to see his mother every day. As a child, Smith decides that one day he will have a lot of property, and everybody will live together on it.

Will’s cousin, Paul, comes to live with Daddio because Paul has been getting into trouble at home. Paul enjoys Smith’s humor, and he makes Smith feel safe. It is through Paul that Smith first discovers hip-hop. Smith explains that because hip-hop was not played on the radio at that time, people would swap cassette tapes of live performances called mixtapes. Hip-hop originated at block parties, where DJs played music for people to dance to. Eventually, DJs learned to create their own music from existing records through techniques like scratching (57). Because the job was so intense, DJs could not interact with the audience, so they brought an MC, who rhymed in the break beats—an art form now known as rapping. Paul owns a lot of mixtapes from his trips to the city, and he shares them with Smith. New York MC Grandmaster Caz becomes a major influence in Smith’s musical career. Caz makes Smith believe it is okay to be who he is. 

Smith starts rapping all day, every day as he goes about his life. He leaves his Catholic school because of mistreatment, and he begins attending the predominantly Black Overbrook High School. On his first day, he gets knocked unconscious by another student. The police get involved, and Gigi warns Smith that if he stops “talking so much, maybe [he] could see some of those hits coming” (63). One day his grandmother finds a notebook of Smith’s rhymes. Imitating his hip-hop idols, Smith’s lyrics include vulgarities and foul language. Gigi writes him a note saying that he can use his gift with words to uplift other people. This makes Smith realize that his way with words is a strength and gives him power. He decides to use that power to uplift others, and he never again uses foul language in his rhymes even when his choice draws criticism from others.

Smith begins to incorporate humor into his raps, which gives him the upper hand when he starts having battles with other rappers. Smith never loses a rap battle, and his skills win him popularity in the hip-hop scene. He attributes his success to the work ethic his father instilled in him. Instead of doing drugs, he practices constantly, filling notebooks with rhymes. He has a teacher in school who constantly calls him Prince, short for Prince Charming. One day, while joking with her, he asks her to call him Fresh Prince, and his MC name is born. 

Smith meets Melanie Parker at school. She refuses to call him Prince, and she becomes the only person to call him by his given name, Willard. He begins walking her home every day, carrying her art portfolio. Melanie lives with her aunt because her mother killed her father. Smith convinces his parents to let Melanie live with them after she has a falling out with her aunt, but she is forced to move out when Mom-Mom catches the two of them having sex. She moves back in with her aunt. Will vows to get a home for him and Melanie one day. He joins a hip-hop crew, but the other members do not have the same work ethic that he does. When he tells the group that he no longer wants to be a part of it, they refuse to let him buy the sampling beat box they all purchased together, so he smashes it. When Daddio’s van is damaged and everything is stolen out of it, Daddio tells Paul to leave the situation alone because stuff like that happens. Paul feels responsible, however, and he beats the man who did it and everyone with him. Because of his disobedience, he never returns to Daddio’s house.