WHEN Jazzy Jeff was growing up, different music would spill out from every room in his West Philadelphia home.

He was the youngest of the family but was entrusted with his brothers' and sisters' favourite records from a very early age.

By the time he was 10 he knew he wanted to be a DJ and using his family’s basement as a training ground it was not long before he was spinning records at parties.

Jeff said: "My brothers had a massive record collection and I was blessed as they showed me how to use the stereo and the records and how to care for them from a very early age.

"At 10 years old I was walking around the house carrying this 45 record player like it was a GI Joe toy. I didn’t want to let it go.

"My dad was into jazz so we had Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith.

"My older brothers were into funk and soul and the likes of George Duke, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Chick Corea.

"And then my sisters liked Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye so being the baby I was sucked into listening to all this music. I had so much music in my head."

It was at one of Jeff's DJ sets that he met Will Smith. He was about 15 and Will was about 11.

Jeff added: "One night I was invited to do a party on the same street that he lived and just by chance the MC couldn’t make it as it was last minute

"So when I get to the basement he comes down and asks me if he could grab the mic. The natural chemistry made it one of the best nights we ever had.

"So after the party we exchanged numbers and he came the next night and the night after that.

"Will and I have very complementary personalities. Will by himself was too outgoing and I was too laid back so where I would pull him back he would push me forward and it was a great balance

"We both had an incredible respect for each other as far as our craft went and understood it was both of us that made it special."

The pair went on to record the anthemic hits, Boom! Shake the Room and Summertime, and appeared together on cult sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

"The one humongous difference is you realise the power of television," said Jeff.

"Any hip hop and music lover could come and see me and go ‘That’s DJ Jazzy Jeff’ but to have 80-year-old white women come up to me and say ‘Jazz’, that scared me.

"The reach of television is so much stronger than music. I must have been 24 or 25. That was half of my life ago and it’s still talked about and still on.

"It’s a blessing to have something that passes the test of time but to have the TV show and a record like Summertime, we’ve been blessed twice.

"Every year I’m waiting for the moment it gets warm and no one plays Summertime."

Jeff spoke to Weekend ahead of his appearance in Manchester as part of the first UK tour of the Red Music Bull Academy.

The 50-year-old is headlining Wax Works, a unique show where the artists on the bill are tasked with collecting the music they want to play on the night from the city's record stores.

It takes place at Great Northern Warehouse on April 19.

Jeff added: "I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am about that because firstly it’s such a cool idea but to me it’s also a throwback to how it used to be.

"I’ll play anything that makes people move and have a good time so I love the fact that I’m going to be digging through the hip hop section, the funk and soul section, the rock and roll section and the jazz section just looking for cool stuff."

It is the first time he has gone to a show without a set prepared and one of the first times he has played vinyl in years.

Jeff said: "There’s a smell that record collectors know from record shops and there’s a feeling.

"That’s the reason people will put on sweat pants and will dig under piles of records.

"I’m scared of heights but I’ve been on top of piles of records because I think that gem is on top of that record mountain.

"I always say that records are to a DJ are what a glove is to a baseball player. You know what they feel like.

"And these are all going to be records that I don’t know. Some of them might not slide the way that you want, some of them maybe a little warped so the spur of the moment is definitely going to create some excitement."

Jeff also said he hopes to collaborate with Will again in the near future. They last appeared together in the UK on The Graham Norton Show in May 2013.

"We talk about it all the time," added the Grammy winner.

"The biggest thing is not the desire, it’s just the time. I think Will being one of the biggest movie stars on the planet is the main obstacle.

"It’s funny because I was doing a show in Las Vegas last summer and Will surprised me and came out.

"It was crazy because my friends couldn’t understand how we could just look at each other and know exactly what to do.

"We still had these eye commands and hand commands that we had 20 years ago on stage. It’s almost like two footballers knowing all the plays 20 years later."

- For more information about Wax Works and other Red Bull Music Academy events visit uktour.redbullmusicacademy.com/manchester

DAVID MORGAN