DJ Jazzy Jeff & Will Smith (Getty)
*Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff recall their early days in music during the latest episode of Smith’s podcast “Class of ’88.”
The duo discussed the pressure they faced during an album recording session in 1987. At the time, Jeff’s leg was in a cast, making it difficult to concentrate. Smith decided to use room-service butter knives to remove the deteriorating casting, The Blast reports.
Will and Jeff were working on a new album for Jive Records in a London hotel room at the time and were “under pressure” to deliver the project “quickly.”
“It had to be great. If we messed it up, we’d probably never get a chance to make another one. It was a big question back then if rap could really make money for record companies,” Smith stated.
“Right before we left for London, Jeff broke his leg in a car accident. So when we finally arrived in our hotel, Jeff was in a full-length cast from his hip to his ankle,” Smith explained, per People magazine.
Rap duo DJ Jazzy Jeff (aka Jeff Townes) And The Fresh Prince (aka Will Smith) appear in a portrait taken on October 18, 1989 in New York City. (Photo by Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives)
Jeff added: “I probably should have gotten the cast off before we left to go make the album, but I didn’t so I was way past due of this cast coming off to the point that the filling inside the cast started to irritate my kneecap — which is the reason Will kinda came up with this brilliant idea of ‘I can get your cast off.’”
Smith used butter knives from hotel room service to cut off the leg cast. Jeff said, “They bring up 24 butter knives, and he proceeds to saw, and he kind of gets it to the point that the cast starts to split.”
Smith added: “So, I had been sawing the cast from the top, which, I guess, isn’t medically recommended, so the cast got stuck maybe halfway down Jeff’s leg.”
The actor said he was confident that he could “get it off,” but family friend Jeremy “JL” Lam ultimately stepped in and successfully removed the cast using the “jagged edge” of a soup can.
“He opened a beef stew can and the jagged edge — he was using the jagged edge of the can top and he went straight down, where I was trying to saw vertically, he went horizontally,” Smith said.
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