The pair began producing music but steered clear of the Gangsta Rap sound that was emerging on the West Coast in groups like Public Enemy and NWA. The Fresh Prince rapped about teenage preoccupations in a clean, curse-free style that middle America found safe and lapped up. The pair’s first single, “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble”, was a hit in 1986 and their first album, Rock The House, put pay to any thoughts of attending college with Smith becoming a millionaire at 18.
Early on it was reported that Smith had turned down a scholarship to Boston’s elite Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) but Smith later scotched the rumour telling an interviewer: "My mother, who worked for the School Board of Philadelphia, had a friend who was the admissions officer at MIT. I had pretty high SAT scores and they needed black kids, so I probably could have gotten in. But I had no intention of going to college."