Watch the opening credits for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and two things are likely to happen. One, you’ll start singing along. Two, you’ll feel a warm nostalgia spread through you like hot cocoa. That might come from the days you watched the show when it originally aired or in reruns. It might also come from seeing something that’s nearly three decades old that – despite all its dated style, colours, and fashion – has lost none of its charm.

Either way, to watch The Fresh Prince opening is to look back. But 26 years ago when the show premiered, it was looking forward, even anticipating, the evolution of TV main title design.

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In 1990, TV openings – for sitcoms especially – weren’t particularly creative. More often than not they’d feature a montage of clips from existing episodes or actors dutifully posing for the camera as their names appeared.

Sitcom openings conveyed basic information about the cast and crew, and propped up the theme song. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was different. Its opening was an entirely original work full of vibrant colours, intricate graffiti, sped-up cartoonish motion, and a dose of slapstick. It was a standalone work telling a self-contained backstory that was creatively distinct from the show – right down to Will Smith’s mother in the opening being different than the one in the show. In this way, it’s not far off from what we see in our current Golden Age of TV main titles. Sure, it may not resemble the openings of series such as,, or, but it serves the same function: focusing on a show’s tone and spirit, rather than merely its star performers. That ahead-of-its-time inventiveness, along with its playful creative quality and infectious theme music, is what has made it one of the greatest TV openings of all time.

But how then did it come about? Well, we’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, and we’ll tell you all about the main titles for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Parents Just Don’t Understand. Album cover for He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper (1988) Two years before a show about a West Philadelphia kid moving to Bel-Air premiered, Jive Records was looking to shoot a video for the duo’s promising second single “Parents Just Don’t Understand” off their album, He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper. “Parents” was a different kind of hip-hop song, and Carli knew she needed a different kind of director to both bring it to life and ensure the pair made a strong first impression. Carli wasn’t a fan of the usual music video-making process: send a song to a production company, who would assign a director to create a treatment – usually, without ever meeting the musicians.

No, Carli wanted a director who would get to know DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince and make a video that achieved her goal: “What could we do that could really tell this story within the budget that we had, in a way that personified the group?” Enter. Director Scott Kalvert on the set of his 2002 film Deuces Wild Kalvert (who sadly passed away in 2014) would go on to direct many music videos and the Leonardo DiCaprio film, but in 1988 he was still in his early days.

The director used to visit Carli’s office regularly to talk about movies, music, and his ambitions. He wanted to make an impression on her.

Eventually, in 1987, Carli gave him a chance, and he directed, which enjoyably merged hip-hop with the visual tropes of Western movies, while staying in line with Kool Moe Dee’s swaggering personality. Kalvert impressed Carli. “What I loved about him was that he wasn’t bound by just doing whatever anybody else was doing,” Carli says. “A lot of rap videos at the time were basically, ‘Okay, we need gold chains. We need sneakers.

We need fancy sweatsuits, and some breakdancing and maybe some girls.’” Kalvert’s willingness to do something different, and work with artists to build on-screen brands true to their personalities, was what led Carli to hire the director for DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s “Parents Just Don’t Understand” music video. He met with Townes and Smith, presented his treatment, and they hit it off. The importance of this collaboration to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air main titles is easy to see.

The graffitied walls, the sped-up Looney Tunes moments, and Smith’s cocky, flirty, slightly spoiled, megawatt charm character is all right there. As Carli puts it: “That video was the blueprint for the opening title sequence.” That video was the blueprint for the opening title sequence.

Music video for DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince's 1988 single ', directed by Scott Kalvert It was also a blueprint, it turns out, for the show itself. “The video for ‘Parents Just Don’t Understand,’ actually, was one of the things that initially convinced NBC to make a pilot deal with Will,” says Andy Borowitz, who collaborated with his then-wife, and writer-producer Susan Borowitz on creating The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It was Susan who provided much of the show’s approach and its main thematic thrust. In she discussed a New York Times article she’d read about how some African Americans’ success was seen as selling out. This, she thought, would make a great television show.

Glenn gould a state of wonder rar. As payment, Bach was given a golden goblet filled with a hundred 'Louis d'Or' worth around $200,000 in today's currency. This gentleman suffered from illness and insomnia, and would have Goldberg play for him when he couldn't sleep. The set includes two 'arias' as Bach called them, which are identical movements which introduce the theme to be developed in the thirty other movements, so that there are thirty variations and thirty-two movements in all.