The 65th Annual Grammy Awards celebrated the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop Sunday night (Feb. 5). The tribute almost included Will Smith. Questlove, who co-curated the 13-minute long tribute, says that the Fresh Prince was originally supposed to be a part of the rappers who showed out to perform.
“I’ll give the spoiler alert away. Will Smith was a part of the festivities tonight, but they started shooting Bad Boys 4 already this week,” Questlove told Variety. “There’s a lot of preliminary shots that he had to do, so we had to lose Will.”
The Roots artist understood Smith’s need to put Bad Boys 4 first. “It was a shot in the dark,” he said. “He’s always shooting movies. We had a lot of people and some of them have other jobs.”
He continued, “There was a lot of legit reasons why we couldn’t be all inclusive of some people.”
The four-time Grammy winner added that many artists including the Roots, Ice-T, Queen Latifah, and LL Cool J — all had to “leave their respective shows” in order to participate in hip-hop tribute.
The performance included many legendary artists spanning several generations. Missy Elliott, Run DMC, Salt n Pepa, Public Enemy, Grandmaster Flash, Ice-T, Queen Latifah, Busta Rhymes with Spliff Star, Nelly, GloRilla, Lil Baby, and more took to the stage.
Take a look at the photos from the hip-hop tribute below: