THE BLACK EYED PEAS
And Why They're the Best Worst Band In America
An expose through music clips
BACKGROUND
Black Eyed Peas is a melting pot of personalities. Frontman will.i.am is African-American, singer Fergie is Caucasian (and former child actor and member of Wild Orchid), Taboo is of Latino descent, and apl.de.ap is a Filipino-American. The band has a wide variety of influence, which may add to their overall appeal.
HISTORY
They released two albums before the addition of Fergie in 2003; one single from each album made the radio, and despite critical acclaim, sales didn't take off. When the song "Where Is The Love?" was released, it scored the first success for the Black Eyed Peas (largely in part to an uncredited Justin Timberlake chorus). Since then, the Black Eyed Peas have become one of the biggest names in music, selling over 18 million albums.
STYLE
The Black Eyed Peas' music has never been complicated; there were never any claims made as to lyrical depth or complexity. They've made a career off of making simple and infectious music that spreads like wildfire. A sample chorus from one of their biggest hits, "My Humps":
THE BREAKDOWN
The Black Eyed Peas are the best worst band in America. Think of all the worst bands you can think of...need some help? Nickelback, Shinedown, Souljah Boy, Lady Gaga, etc. The Black Eyed Peas win. Not by value, or product; the Black Eyed Peas are the best at making bad music, and it's easy to see with their new album, The E.N.D. Here's why:
LYRICAL VAPIDITY
The Black Eyed Peas (BEP from here on out) seem to pride themselves on terrible lyrics. Gems from The E.N.D. include:
From "Electric City"
From "One Tribe"
From "Meet Me Halfway"
The content doesn't stop there. In the song "Now Generation," BEP attempts to create the "We Didn't Start The Fire" of the i-Age, and comes up with this:
TRICKERY
BEP may lack in the lyric department, but they seriously make up for it with infectious music, tricking the listener into . If The E.N.D. were a purely instrumental album, BEP would probably get a better response from critics. However, songs without words don't sell. Songs with great beats and words sell even more, and BEP knows this. That's why a song called "Imma Be" becomes a pleasure to listen to; it's the best track on the album:
APL.DE.AP
It's hard to say what exactly is Apl.De.Ap's purpose in the band. His delivery is stiff, and it feels like he's trying to hard to be hard. He speaks as if his mouth is wired shut, and has a definite lack of ability in crafting well-made rhymes. Aside from his "Meet Me Halfway" verse you just heard, here's another example, from "Showdown":
He also feels the need to mention his own name in every single verse he does. It seems as if BEP keeps him around to make the others look better.
THE CRUTCH
As introduced in last month's Outside Information (here), a crutch is a word or theme that reoccurs in an artist's body of work. On The E.N.D., that crutch is the word "rock." It appears 118 times on the album, which, coincidentally, is not a rock album. (On the same token, what was once "rock" is now played on "adult contemporary" stations, "alternative" has become "mainstream," "indie" is the new "alternative," and "underground" still sucks.)
YOUR MOM
BEP will stop at nothing to sell records, and that includes releasing their most catchy material, then making it available in heavy dosage to moms around the nation. Their song "Let's Get It Started" was put into NBA Finals ads, and most recently, "I Gotta Feeling" can be heard in Target ads, airing during every single show your mom watches. So now, your mom is a fan of BEP, thereby doubling their marketable audience.
THE KIDS
However, BEP may not be exactly what fans bargained for on this new album. How do you think the average American mom would react to hearing her favorite Fergie saying this?:
Also, it should be noted that BEP somehow avoided getting a Parental Advisory sticker on their album, even though the album is rife with language that some may find offensive, including the dreaded N-word.
MASS-MARKET
Because BEP know they can sell anything, they begin to stop trying. The previous clip from "Out Of My Head" illustrates a song that had no lyrics before Fergie went into the booth. The entire song sounds free-styled, as if they knew for a fact that all they had to do was say whatever came to their minds. On the song "Alive", the second verse is simply the first verse repeated by another member of the band.
AUTOTUNE
Yes, we get it. AutoTune is huge. Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty, it's everywhere. But this album takes it further, morphing voices, masking lyrics, and contributing to the general feeling of what-the-fuckery that pervades the entire disc. Just listen:
See? What-the-fuckery. (It should be noted that will.i.am's inspiration for this album was Australian club music.)
NEO-HIPPIE
The album also contains desperate pleas for change, as illustrated in the song "One Tribe" and a weird interlude about the economy that's damn near impossible to understand. What makes these efforts seem vapid is, for one, "One Tribe" is stupid, and two, it appears on the album not too long after the song "Ring-A-Ling," which features this chorus:
So any empowerment message is negated by their use of a 3rd-grader's anatomical term.
TO BE FAIR
To clear something up: This album is produced wonderfully. will.i.am's production values jumped up drastically, and the album is actually interesting to listen to; it's just the fact that it's schlock designed to sell records rather than make meaningful music. But that seems to be the current trend in the industry.
So there you have it. The Black Eyed Peas are the Best Worst band in America, because they have figured out how to sell millions of albums with the least amount of effort possible.
Also, The E.N.D. stands for The Energy Never Dies. The (far-superior) band N.E.R.D., which stands for No-one Ever Really Dies, should take some action.
1 comment:
so true!
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