Free Will.i.am by Danny White

look in depth, and it’s quality
from the top down.’
    In a sense, the sometimes harsh time that the band were experiencing at the pens of the critics was a result of their more admirable traits. The positivity of their message was one that sat ill
at ease with the critics, who tend to be a breed more interested in ‘cool’ than happiness. Although Will’s band have little in common with British stadium act Coldplay, both acts
found that their attitude chimed enormously with mass, mainstream audiences precisely for the reason it did not with reviewers. For instance, take
Blender
magazine’s review, which
concluded of the band’s happy attitude: ‘Problem is, that kind of constant high gets as dull as life on Prozac.’
    For Will, the prospect of reining in their upbeat message in order to please a handful of journalists was never on the cards. In time, more and more journalists would come to appreciate his
ways, particularly those on more considered titles. For instance, when they performed at the Grammys, the
Washington Post
said theirs was ‘the most impassioned performance of the
night’. Their appeal to the mainstream was reaffirmed when the NBA chose the
Elephunk
track ‘Let’s Get Retarded’ as the anthem for the play-off matches. The lyrics
and title of the song were edited to ‘Let’s Get ItStarted’. They also gave the song to the Democrat party to use for the election campaign of White House
hopeful John Kerry. Will hoped the song would help send Kerry to victory over the much-maligned George W. Bush. It did not do so, but Will enjoyed his brush with politics. Next time he got involved
with a presidential campaign it would be in a much higher-profile sense. An ultimately triumphant one, too.
    Mulling over the critical response to their latest release, Will, in part, did understand the perspectives of the critics. ‘If I was a journalist and I knew The Black Eyed Peas when they
first came out and where they are now, I would write some of the same things too,’ he told
The Times
. ‘The way things were marketed didn’t honour how it was built. But we
weren’t trying to make hits when we made
Elephunk
. You think I would have called the CIA terrorists [as he did in ‘Where is the Love?’] right around the time America went
to Iraq if I was trying to make a record to get played on the radio?’
    Meanwhile, he wondered whether the post-September 11 era might herald changes in the hip-hop industry. ‘Everything affects hip-hop,’ he told
The Onion
. ‘The question
is, how does it affect the money that corporations are going to invest to put out different kinds of hip-hop? Hip-hop may offer negative feedback on the world’s problems, but that’sjust the hip-hop that’s being promoted now. There are hip-hop groups in different sectors and different communities that are doing positive shit, but corporations and
companies don’t want to spend the money on them that it would take to get them out there.’
    Will hoped that the ‘positive shit’ might get more airtime and investment. Not that his focus on positivity and unity was blinkered. He realized that his vision was as vulnerable to
cash-in and distortion as any. ‘The only thing that I’m afraid of is that if we get too big, the labels are going to be like, “Get a fucking Indian guy, and a black guy, and a
fucking Pakistani, and make them dance!” That’s the only thing that I’m afraid of.’
    A renewed wave of accusations that the band had sold out rolled in. ‘All that “sell-out” stuff comes from the same people who held us close to their hearts for our first two
records,’ Will responded in an interview with
Faze
magazine. ‘And they call it “sell-out” for what reason? Because we have a white girl in our group now? I
don’t think that just because one day you do a jazzy record and then you do a funk record means you sold out. It just means you like music and you’re trying to dabble in every ray of