Will Smith will perform new song at 2024 BET Awards

Smith is reportedly working on a new album and will perform his latest original song at the awards ceremony.

Jun 24, 2024

Will Smith is shown at the European premiere of "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" on May 27 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Gerald Matzka/Getty Images for Sony Pictures)

Will Smith will be taking the stage at the 2024 BET Awards on Sunday.

The Oscar winner is scheduled to perform a new original song at the awards ceremony, according to Variety. Smith is working on a new album, the publication reported, but no further details about his upcoming performance were shared.

Connie Orlando, executive vice president of specials, music programming & music strategy at BET, gushed about Smith in a statement, saying that he is a “global icon.”

“From his start as a rapper to ‘The Fresh Prince’ to being a box office king as one of the Bad Boys, Will Smith is truly a global icon, and we are honored to welcome him back to grace the BET Awards stage,” Orlando told Variety. “We look forward to Will adding to yet another defining night for the culture that is not to be missed.”

Smith’s BET performance follows a surprise appearance during singer J Balvin’s set at the Coachella festival in April, where Smith rapped one of his signature hits “Men in Black” while wearing the costume from the 1997 film.

Actor Will Smith attends the ‘Bad Boys: Ride Or Die’ photocall on May 26, 2024, in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images) –

Smith opened up about his rap career in an interview with David Letterman, explaining that he disliked being called “soft” during his early career.

“Not pressure as much as it was always that I was ‘soft,’” Smith told Letterman in 2022. “Dave, I hated that, being called soft. The origin of my style and why I pursued it in that way [is] when I was about 12, my grandmother, she found my first rap book.”

“I couldn’t even curse well,” he continued. “It was like, ‘Shit ass damn/Will, you the man.’ Not even good cursing. My grandmother found my rap book and wrote a letter in [the] front of my book and said, ‘Dear Willard, truly intelligent people do not have to use words like these to express themselves. Please show the world that you’re as smart as we think you are. Love, Gigi.’ And that was the reason I never cursed in any of my records.”