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— by Jennifer Vineyard
The Black Eyed Peas like to joke that they don't take breaks — they take breaths.
After all, the group hasn't really come up for air since the surprise breakthrough of their last LP, Elephunk. In the two years since the release of that album — which yielded the hits "Where Is the Love?," "Let's Get It Started" and "Hey Mama" — the Peas have been absolutely everywhere: in the theme song for the NBA, commercials for Best Buy, characters in "Urbz: Sims in the City," guests at award shows and music festivals, a featured act at voter-registration drives and tsunami-relief concerts, in personal pages on MySpace, on tour with artists ranging from N.E.R.D. to Dave Matthews Band to Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera — they're even opening up for the Rolling Stones later this year. And that's not a complete list.
With barely a pause for breath (well, maybe one), a brand new Peas LP, Monkey Business, will arrive in stores on June 7. The question is: How on earth did the Black Eyed Peas find the time to record an album?
Part of the answer lies in where on earth they've been in the past two years. Monkey Business was recorded during stolen moments on tour, in Los Angeles and London, in Berlin and Brazil. And fittingly enough, it sounds "mad all over the place," as Will.I.Am describes it, jumping from "bossa nova to '80s to drum'n'bass to surf-rock to hip-hop."
A new Peas LP was not a part of the group's game plan for 2005 — this was to be the year the individual members would work on their own projects. Will has been producing other artists in his studio and starting his own label, will.i.am Music Group, which is putting out a new album from Macy Gray (which Will appears on) in the fall. Fergie, Apl.de.Ap and Taboo planned on making solo albums — and they still do. But since the band's popularity was peaking, the Peas didn't want to risk losing momentum, so writing and recording an album was added to their already jam-packed schedule.
"We're always open for challenges," Will says. "You never know what situations you're going to be in and the demands you're going to have to meet — the vibe that you're in to even have the headspace to step up to that request. We're one of those groups that, whatever the obstacle is, we're going to put our best foot forward and figure out the way across it, under it, over it, or through it. Hell, it's just an obstacle, right?"
"We had all this creative energy," Fergie chimes in. "We wanted to spill it out and go with it. It was hard for me to get used to writing and recording on the road, because usually I'm doing studio time all at once, and then touring all at once. This was a big challenge, but it turned out to be this creative waterfall which just fell down into this huge ocean that is Monkey Business."
The Peas aren't sailing that ocean alone: A quartet of J's — Justin, Jack Johnson, John Legend and even James Brown — dip an oar in, as does Sting. Different songs are snapshots of which cities they were in, what was inspiring them and who they were hanging out with at the moment. "We have a portable studio that I take on the road," Will says. "We record in airplanes, trains, hotel rooms, cathedrals. If we wanted to sneak in Notre Dame, we'd record up in that."
There's nothing from Notre Dame, but the album is loaded with travelogue from other places. The surf in Brazil and bullet trains of Japan reminded Will of Dick Dale's "Miserlou" guitar riff, so he samples it in "Pump It." The bhangra clubs in London become the Miami bass/ Bollywood fusion of "Don't Phunk with My Heart," as Fergie quotes Lisa Lisa's 1985 hit "I Wonder If I Take You Home."
Where they could meet up with their collaborators, they did — often using the Peas' pals' songs as jumping-off points, such as when they extrapolated Sting's "Englishman in New York" during a stop in Berlin to become the togetherness-celebration of "Union," or used Justin Timberlake's "Señorita" to collaborate on "My Style" while at home in Los Angeles.
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Photo: Interscope
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