DJ Jazzy Jeff

Jeffrey Allen Townes (born January 22, 1965), also known as DJ Jazzy Jeff or simply Jazz, is an American hip hop and R&B disc jockey, record producer, turntablist and actor who is best known for his early career with Will Smith as DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.

Biography

Early life and career beginnings

Jeffrey Allen Townes was born on January 22, 1965, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Early on, he developed a reputation and a following as a school and block party DJ. He took the stage name DJ Jazzy Jeff and was one half of the hip hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince along with Will Smith. The group received the first Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance in 1989 for "Parents Just Don't Understand", though their most successful single was "Summertime" which earned the group their second Grammy and peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. He also won the world DJ championship in the 1986 New Music Seminar DJ Battle.

Acting

When Smith branched out into television with the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Jazzy Jeff played a recurring character named Jazz, Smith's best friend on the show. In the early seasons, the two characters always greeted each other with their signature handshake (swinging mid-five, point-back, snap with both characters saying "Pssh!"). A recurring joke throughout the show's run involved the character being physically ejected from the house by Uncle Phil (James Avery), using the same footage for comedic effect.

Prince discography

This article includes the discography of Prince. Also included is a list of the songs and recordings he has written and produced during his career. See also The New Power Generation, Madhouse and 94 East discographies.

Prince is an extremely prolific artist, having released several hundred songs both under his own name and under pseudonyms and/or pen names, as well as writing songs which have been recorded by other artists. Estimates of the actual number of songs written by Prince (released and unreleased) range anywhere from five hundred to well over one thousand. Prince has sold over 150 million records worldwide, including 48.9 million certified units in the United States, 4.8 million in France, over 1 million in Canada and over 10 million records in the United Kingdom.

Prince has accumulated five U.S. number-one singles and fifteen worldwide #1 hits, as well as 8 worldwide number one albums. He was the most successful artist on the Billboard charts from 1980-2000, scoring 8 #1 R&B singles and 7 #1 Dance singles (tied for second place for male entertainers with Enrique Iglesias and Michael Jackson). He has scored over fifty top 40 hits around the world since 1979. He has been ranked as the 21st most successful act of all time, the greatest songwriter of all time, the 26th most successful chart artist worldwide, including 27 overall number-one entries, and being the most successful chart act of the 1980s. His most commercial period was from 1982's 1999 to 1996's Emancipation, however, he has maintained a loyal audience since and experienced a commercial resurgence with 2004's Musicology, paving the way for several successful albums to follow including his latest, Hit n Run Phase Two, released in December 2015.