Will Smith | Civic Hall, Wolverhampton | 30 August 2025

Rating: 7/10

There’s a specific kind of cognitive dissonance that comes with watching Will Smith open a show with ‘Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It’ in Civic Hall, Wolverhampton on a Bank Holiday Saturday. Part of your brain is still processing the fact that this is actually happening — that the Fresh Prince, the man who hasn’t put out an album in two decades, who spent the better part of three years being the punchline to every awards ceremony joke on the internet, is actually here, mic in hand, grinning like he’s got something to prove. Another part of your brain, the part you didn’t expect to wake up tonight, is already dancing.

The “Based on a True Story” Summer Tour has been building to this. Wolverhampton was the final UK headline date of the run — coming off the back of Brixton, Manchester, Cardiff and Scarborough — and there was a sense in the room that this was either a lap of honour or a goodbye. Possibly both. The Civic Hall is the right size for this kind of occasion: intimate enough that Smith can actually see faces, big enough that it still feels like an event. And for the record, this was his first ever show in Wolverhampton, a fact he mentioned and the crowd received with the kind of disproportionate civic pride that only Midlanders can produce on command.

The setlist leaned hard on nostalgia — which isn’t automatically a criticism — but it was when Smith let the room breathe around the new material that things got genuinely interesting. ‘You Can Make It’, the gospel-inflected single that hit No. 1 on the Billboard Gospel Airplay Chart earlier this year, landed with unexpected weight. It’s easy to be cynical about a redemption arc set to an uplifting chorus, but the song works precisely because it doesn’t try too hard. Stripped of the bombast you’d expect, it sat quietly in the middle of the set and did its job.

“I didn’t come back to prove nothing — I came back because I wasn’t finished.”

Smith said something like that between songs, the kind of between-song patter that could easily tip into a therapy session but somehow didn’t. It helped that DJ Jazzy Jeff was behind the decks — their chemistry hasn’t rusted. When they moved through the medley section — ‘Jump Around’ bleeding into ‘Apache (Jump On It)’ bleeding into ‘Run’s House’ — it stopped feeling like a gig and started feeling like a block party that happened to have a production budget.

The rougher edges were real, though. ‘Anxiety’, the Based on a True Story cut dealing with his post-Oscars mental state, is a brave piece of work on record, and you respect the decision to play it live. But sandwiched between the nostalgia hits and the tribute to James Avery — a genuinely moving moment, delivered quietly, that earned its applause — it felt like the pacing stumbled. The emotional registers weren’t quite connecting, the set shifting gears without always finding the clutch.

‘Wild Wild West’ got the singalong it always gets, which is both a testament to and an indictment of our collective memory — it’s not a great song, but it’s our not-great song, and the Wolverhampton crowd owned it accordingly. ‘Men in Black’ still slaps in a way that’s embarrassing to admit. And then, right at the end, ‘Summertime’ — which closed the show in the warmest, most disarming way imaginable. It’s a song built entirely out of golden-hour feeling, and on an August Bank Holiday night in the West Midlands, with the room finally fully surrendered to the moment, it landed perfectly.

‘Work of Art’, one of the better cuts from Based on a True Story and proof that Smith can still write a hook, gave the new album its best argument of the evening. It didn’t need to compete with ‘Miami’ or ‘Bad Boys’ — it just did its thing and won a few people over who’d arrived unconvinced. That’s the version of Will Smith you want to see more of: the one who doesn’t explain himself, who just gets on with it.

Whether this constitutes a full artistic rehabilitation or just a very accomplished greatest hits show with a few new chapters bolted on, we’re not entirely sure yet. The Based on a True Story album is better than anyone was ready to admit back in March, but the live show is still working out how much it believes in that material versus how much it relies on the back catalogue to carry the night.

What we can say is this: Will Smith at Civic Hall on a Bank Holiday Saturday, first ever Wolverhampton show, final UK date of the summer — it was stranger, warmer, and more alive than it had any right to be. Sometimes that’s enough.