Around halfway through Will Smith’s set the video screens are taken over by a mock streaming service called Willflix. The cursor cycles through box office smash after box office smash before teeing up a shoutalong to Inner Circle’s Bad Boys, drawing attention to his outsized cultural footprint while also framing the night as a whole: a disorienting splurge of nostalgia, high energy set pieces and self-help sermons, channelling the tonal whiplash of watching the first five minutes of 10 films before calling it and going to bed.
Smith launches into Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It, the crowd leaping and yelling each lyric as he falls into formation with six dancers dressed in outsized sports jerseys, mimicking his own Phillies cap and red starter jacket. He wore a similar get-up on the cover of his recent album Based on a True Story, a critical and commercial turkey that documented his journey into shame and acceptance post-Oscars slap, and there’s friction between its stomping rap-rock soul-searching and Smith’s undimmed need for everyone to have a good time when he’s around.
His new material fares better live than it does on record, with a rowdy Bulletproof gilded by a shreddy guitar solo and You Can Make It cleverly turned outwards to become an audience-wide pep talk. There is a remarkable sequence during the intro to Work of Art where Smith pulls the statuette he won that night from a bag as he reels off the track’s opening lines a cappella. It’s wild – a moment of piercing vulnerability that also recalls David Brent going home to get his guitar.
The other side of the coin is that, given a stage and a microphone, Smith remains a peerless, goofily endearing show off. He pogos, hollers and gives the people what they want, filling the stage with dozens of “agents” during Men in Black and interpolating the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air into Switch. Fuelled by after school repeats of his star-making sitcom, the audience’s response is a raucous shot of goodwill that keeps Smith’s head above the water line when things get choppy.
• Will Smith plays O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, on 27 August, O2 Brixton Academy, London, on 28 August and University of Wolverhampton at the Halls on 30 August
