Songfacts®:

• "Summertime" samples the keyboard lick and also the vibe from "Summer Madness," a laid-back instrumental that Kool & The Gang released in 1974. Will Smith (the Fresh Prince) gives it a shout near the end of the song with the line, "And this is the Fresh Prince's new definition of summer madness."
• Released in the summer of 1991, the song is about the joy of summer as lived by Will Smith (The Fresh Prince), and DJ Jazzy Jeff around Philadelphia. Smith had recently moved to Los Angeles and was feeling nostalgic about summers in Philly, which are highly anticipated because it's pretty cold there in the spring. In Los Angeles, it's warm pretty much year round so summer isn't as big a deal.
• "Summertime" won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance By a Duo or Group. There was some drama surrounding the category that year because Public Enemy, who were also nominated, boycotted the show because the rap awards were not televised, saying it disrespected "inner-city contributions to the music industry." Public Enemy was nominated the two previous years as well and also lost.
• The early hits for DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince were goofy story songs like "Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble" and "Parents Just Don't Understand." "Summertime" was released in 1991, when they had outgrown those kind of songs but were still keeping it light. When the song was released, Smith's sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had just finished its first season. The duo had another hit together with "Boom! Shake the Room" in 1993, but a few years later Smith became a popular solo artist and also a movie star.
• The song opens with Will Smith hollering, "Drums please!" The drums that come in were sampled from James Brown's 1974 track "Funky President (People It's Bad)."
  
  Starting a song with a vocal was generally a bad idea in 1991 because disc jockeys couldn't talk up the intro, but right after Smith calls in the drums, there's a smooth groove for the next 15 seconds, which gave DJs a nice bed to talk over.
• The music video was shot at Belmont Plateau park in Philadelphia, which is mentioned in the song ("A place called the Plateau is where everybody go"). The cookout was real - most of the people in the video were friends and family of Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith. It captured the feeling of the song and gave the guys an opportunity to host a barbecue.
  
  It was directed by Jim Swaffield, who also did "Scenario" by A Tribe Called Quest.
• The song debuted on May 6, 1991 when the music video aired following the season finale of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on NBC. This was great promotion for the song and an innovative marketing move. The following year, FOX did something similar when debuted "The Right Kind Of Love" by Jeremy Jordan on Beverly Hills, 90210, and "How Do You Talk To An Angel" by Jamie Walters on The Heights.
  
  Props, though to The Simpsons, who beat DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince to it by six months when they debuted "Do The Bartman" after an episode.
• "Summertime" is very popular in the UK, where it returns to the chart every now and then. It first returned in 1994, then again in 2008, 2011 and 2013.
• Nobody was really naming a "song of the summer" back in 1991, but we'd like to award "Summertime" that title retroactively. It was released in May and started heating up in July. On August 3 it reached its chart peak of #4.
  
  There were bigger hits around this time, but they weren't very summery - we're talking tunes like "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" by Bryan Adams and "Rush, Rush" by Paula Abdul. Those weren't the songs blasting from speakers, but "Summertime" was.