For as long as I’ve been paying attention to hip hop, Will Smith (as The Fresh Prince) has always been a major presence.  It’s the squeaky-clean family fun type rap that everyone can get behind.  It was insanely successful and has continued to be huge in syndication for the last few years.

The iconic opening sequence of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air wil forever be burned into my memory, and not just because of the wicked neon clothing Smith rocks in it.

Here’s the extended intro (which is rare enough, and kind of interesting):

We posted about Shad’s parody of the sequence for a music video of The Old Prince Still Lives at Home.  This is an example of a good parody.

Shad – The Old Prince Still Lives At Home

And the kids over at Collegehumor have tried to parody it by making a “gangster” version. It’s not as good. Not to hate on these kids either. They get typecast as being mainly into fart jokes and frat boy antics, but they have definitely come up with some comedy gold in the past. This one just didn’t quite do it.

I guess I don’t have a real answer to my rhetorical headline.  Perhaps it’s just as simple as the fact that every person in our generation can sing along to the Fresh Prince intro.  Or maybe it’s something a little deeper.  People connect with it because it seems like such a big piece of our collective childhoods.