MTV Generation Award

AJ Vogt
Apr 10, 2016
2 min read

The MTV Generation Award is the successor to the MTV Lifetime Achievement Award. The recipient of the award is celebrated for great achievement in movies. The distinction, according to MTV "is given to an artist who has shown us a variety of impressive roles, a personal and professional flair and of course, an awesome level of talent." So you may be asking, why are we even talking about this award. It is because this year's recipient is Will Smith, who is and was a prominent figure in the hip hop community.

Will Smith is not only an actor in famous blockbuster movies as well as producer, but his career started as a rapper and songwriter. In the late 1980s Will Smith achieved fame as a rapper under the name of The Fresh prince. Specifically, Will Smith was the MC of a hip hop due DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.

Will Smith was born in West Philadelphia. Yes, that corresponds to the lyrics of Will Smith's famous show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Some of Smith's most famous works were "Parents Just Don't Understand" and "Summertime." Both songs were actually performed for Will Smith's tribute performance at the MTV Movie Awards tonight. Smith and his hip hop group even won a Grammy in 1988 for Best Rap Performance for "Parents Just Don't Understand."

Will Smith is such prolific figure for the hip hop community for a multitude of reasons. While he did not necessarily grow up in the toughest of neighborhoods, and did not connect directly to the gangsta rap era of hip hop. Since Will Smith had won his first Grammy in 1988, he then began to act. His first major movie roles were in Six Degrees of Separation and Bad Boys in the early 1990s.

Throughout Smith's time as an actor and rapper, he has won 6 American Music Awards, 4 Grammys, 4 MTV Video Music Awards, 4 World Music Awards and has been nominated twice for an Oscar and nominated five times for a Golden Globe Award, and the list goes on and on in many other categories. Therefore, not only has Will Smith been a successful actor and rapper, he has also blazed trails and opened doors for many future hip hop artists and actors in the future. Smith would portray roles in movies that many would never thing a black man could and his lyrics in his records connected to more than just a "ghetto" culture. Thus, I do think that Will Smith is quite deserving of the MTV Generation Award, as he has inspired more than just a generation of future actors and musicians.

Check out his Grammy winning record, "Parents Just Don't Understand."