by Danny White
Later, the band was invited to take part on another multi-band tour, but this time it was on a bill dominated not by hip-hop and soul artists, but punk acts. The Black Eyed Peas were an improbable fit for the Vans Warped Tour, but they agreed to join. Sure enough, it took them a while to win over audiences. At one show they were racially abused by some skinheads in the crowd. The angry skinheads called the band ‘niggers’, and told them they should ‘go back to Africa’. Elsewhere on the tour, bottles were thrown and obscene hand gestures were offered by many audience members. However, the band stuck to their guns and often managed to win audiences over by the end of their set. It was often their song ‘Head Bobs’ that began to turn the mood. By the time they left the stage each night, they would have won some of the fans over, but as often as not it had been a tough experience. With the tour complete, the band’s stature in America had grown. Now, it was time for them to fly further afield to promote their music.
Will’s love affair with London, and with England in general, was about to blossom.
3 Technology and Fate
Ever since the band name-checked London during their early song ‘Joints & Jam’, it had seemed inevitable that they would enjoy life in the English capital. So, when they arrived in the country in September 1998, they were full of excitement. They did all the cheesy tourist things, visiting landmarks and museums, and whooping with excitement as they saw the red telephone boxes, British policemen and so on. They took walks in Regent’s Park, a stunning experience as autumn was just setting in, with all the beauty that entails.
They played two nights at Camden Town’s famous Jazz Café and were thrilled by the acclaim they received from the audiences in the crowded venue on Parkway, one of the district’s hippest streets. London was proving to be a special place for them. Apl even commented that he felt like ‘one of the fucking Beatles out there’. With UK radio stations playing their music, crowds cheering them in Camden, and the band’s merchandising arm doing a healthy trade, London felt very much like a second home to Will. It was in the English capital that he rebuilt his confidence, following the disappointment of the debut album.
Back home in LA, they began work on the follow-up album in the autumn of 1999. With Will at the centre of everything, the band spent four months recording the album that would be called Bridging the Gap. Most of the work took place at Paramount Studios, with around fifty songs they had written, mostly on the road, since they had wrapped work on their debut. During the recording, the evidence of Will’s successful networking on the road was clear for all to see. A succession of big-name artists collaborated, some of them longer-term friends or contacts of Will, but many of them names he had signed up during the Smokin’ Grooves tour.
Among the names to collaborate were De La Soul, Wyclef Jean, Macy Gray, Mos Def and DJ Premier. The last also worked on the production of the overall album. Some of the ‘collaborations’ were actually performed remotely, with the external act sending their contribution electronically to the main studio. However, Will did work in shoulder-to-shoulder proximity to DJ Premier. The day he and his bandmates stepped into his legendary D&D Studios in Manhattan was a proud and electrifying one for all the visitors. As far as they were concerned, they were standing in one of music’s most hallowed environments, alongside their genre’s finest producer.
Not everyone they approached to be involved with the album consented. For instance, Paul McCartney refused to allow them to sample the Beatles track, ‘Baby You’re a Rich Man’. While some critics would snipe that, in signing up De La Soul and other acts as collaborators, the Black Eyed Peas were merely trying to hang on to the coattails of bigger names, the variety of sounds and rich influences that came with them was what mattered to most listeners to the final product. Once the band had selected the final cut of tracks for the album, it was ready for release in the autumn of 2000.
Technology and fate, though, would intervene in the run-up to the September release, when several tracks from the album were leaked online. While at the time this was a frustrating development for the band, and an almost devastating one in terms of sales, it would prompt Will, in particular, to grasp the opportunities that the internet and other technological developments offered.
The rude awakening began when, several months ahead of the album’s release, Will suddenly heard some of the tracks being played by a DJ at a party. Around the same time, Will’s friend Dante Santiago also heard a track being played – at a shoe store in downtown Los Angeles. When the band investigated how this could have happened, they were pointed towards the online music-sharing site, Napster. There, they found that the entire album had been leaked and was being shared for free by members. At this stage, the sharing of music online was in its infancy. Many acts were finding themselves caught out in this way.
A crisis meeting was called at the band’s headquarters in Los Angeles. They huddled round a conference-call telephone connected to the record-label management. In his book, Taboo noted that Will was the most shaken up by the development. ‘[He] was really bent out of shape because we were not in control of our music, and he, more than any of us, hates being out of control.’ The band’s suspicion that they were, for now at least, essentially powerless in the face of the Napster phenomenon, hit them hard. Will, though, became consumed by an urge to grasp all the opportunities that were available in the blossoming world of technology. Within years, he would be on top of the world of the internet. By the time he became a judge on the UK television show The Voice, he would be so synonymous with the internet that his tweeting would become a topic of national debate.
More immediately, though, the actual release of Bridging the Gap became surrounded by disappointment. When work on the album had been completed, Will was convinced they had something very special on their hands. There would be no grand unveiling, though, merely a commercial confirmation of a release that had already taken place. Far from exceeding the disappointing sales of Behind the Front, Bridging the Gap actually sold less. Still, the album received a glowing tribute from Rolling Stone’s reviewer, who commented that whereas Behind the Front ‘was a little too slickly produced’, Bridging the Gap is ‘a more organic-feeling representation of their considerable skills and vision. Uncluttered but muscular production, deft samples and smart rhymes all ensure that the album’s power increases with repeated listenings.’
Furthermore, Bridging reached higher in the charts than its predecessor, peaking at number sixty-seven in America. That could not lift the mood, though, as the album sold only 250,000 copies initially. Given that it had been downloaded illegally nearly four million times, one can see the impact that the Napster leak had on the album’s commercial performance. True, not all of those downloaders would have paid money for the album had that been the only way of obtaining it, but a significant proportion surely would have.
Vocalist Kim Hill, though, believes the low sales figures were unrelated to the leak. ‘I doubt, very strongly, that the record sales were jeopardized by Napster,’ she said. She added that the problem was the band’s image: ‘Three boys with sneakers and argyle socks, and a girl that actually had clothes on’. Whatever the case, the Napster leak had shaken Will. In the future, iTunes and other legitimate websites would make online music purchasing a less ‘wild west’ affair, but that was no comfort at the time. To make matters worse, this would not be the last that Will and his band would hear from online leakage.
*
Will, who had dreamed of such success and worked so hard with clear ambitions in mind, was not complaining about the sudden upturn in their fortunes. While celebrating their success, he set to work thinking about how to build on it in the future. Part of that future would be further forays into solo territory. He had released his first full-length solo album, Lost Change, in November 2001. Due to various factors, including the 11 September attacks and – as we shall see – the rising focus on the Black Eyed Peas, the album failed to make a huge impact on the public psyche. Instead, it rather got lost
, and many admirers of Will’s music were not at first even aware of its existence. However, it makes for a rich and enjoyable experience that, with the benefit of hindsight, gave signposts to Will’s future.
In one of the few reviews, the website AllMusic described it as: ‘A sophisticated and musically enthralling endeavour that still manages to be accessible’, concluding that ‘Lost Change does an admirable job of implementing a host of different styles, without losing the listener in the process.’
In contrast to his hugely commercial approach to Black Eyed Peas releases, Will was genuinely unfazed by the poor sales of his solo debut. ‘It wasn’t really supposed to [sell a lot],’ he told Rime magazine. Instead, he added, he wanted it to make an impact on a handful of influential music industry figures. ‘The only people I really cared about listening to it and liking it was the Okayplayer community and the Breakestra community. That’s not really a lotta people – it’s just tastemakers, people that care about music integrity. That’s pretty much all I cared about. I got the video played on MTV – shot the video, paid for it myself, and I took it to MTV’s offices and they added it. That was kinda surprising cuz it wasn’t like it was [selling] mad units, and there were a whole bunch of other groups that they weren’t playing.’ Billing it as a ‘soundtrack’, Will was pleased with the outcome of his debut solo venture.
The band’s next album began to be developed in November 2001 and was released two years to the month later. The heart of the album was the track ‘Where is the Love?’ – the song that would propel the band to dizzy new heights of fame, and was inspired by a historic tragedy. On 11 September 2001, the Black Eyed Peas were in northern California, where they had been working on new material. Will was up early and was watching television when he heard the news of the terrorist attacks on the east coast of America. He watched as the aftermath of the attacks on New York began to unfold, then rushed upstairs to wake Taboo and tell him the news. ‘Shit, man, this is scary: we’re being attacked!’ he told his bandmate. As Taboo struggled to absorb the news, Will added: ‘America is being attacked. It’s the end of the fucking world, brother!’
They switched the bedroom television on and were greeted by the day’s horribly iconic scene: the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center. ‘I saw the second one hit ... right into the building,’ Will told Taboo. ‘Boom! I tell you, dude ... this is it! We’re being fucked. We’re fucked!’
As they watched the towers fall, Will’s fear soared. ‘We’ve got to go home,’ he told the band, ‘we’ve got to go home’. With all air traffic grounded in America, flying home was not to be an option for several days. Therefore, they hired wagons and a U-Haul to take them and their equipment back to New York. During the six-hour journey they sat speechless as they listened to the radio report and discuss the day’s events. With a tour due to start in just forty-eight hours, the band members were not in the mood to perform – and suspected that their audiences would not be in the mood for concerts. Yet they were also mindful that to cancel or postpone the dates would be, to an extent, allowing the terrorists who had attacked America another victory.
Will visited his grandmother to ask her advice on how they should proceed. She told him that if God had not intended their music to help heal people, then the tour would never have been arranged. She told Will that he had to offer therapy for people at the time of national crisis. ‘Your music matters, and you are one of God’s angels,’ she said. By this stage, she scarcely needed to deliver her final verdict: that they should do the tour, as planned.
The tour itself proved to be a dramatic rollercoaster experience. Due to the involvement of Coca-Cola in the promotion of the dates, the audience size varied spectacularly from venue to venue. On occasion, this made for some peculiar experiences. In New Jersey, for instance, just thirteen fans turned up to the sizeable venue. This meant the entire audience was in the front row. Naturally, Will managed to make light of the situation by acting as if he were playing to an enormous venue, packed to the rafters. ‘How y’all doin’?’ he bellowed to the thirteen fans. His humour, and indeed his humility, was the saviour of the evening. The band handed pieces of fruit to each of the audience members and asked them their names so that Will could embark on improvised, personalized raps for each of them in turn.
A few nights later, in Manhattan, the audience was 400-strong. At all the dates, Will made an announcement that no terrorist could stop the world from turning or music from being made. His defiant and uplifting speeches were just what the country needed as it healed itself. Even Will’s positivity was tested, though, by the atmosphere of paranoia, distrust and racism that he detected among some Americans in the aftermath of the attacks. Where, he wondered, is the love?
That question became the centrepiece of the next song they wrote. As they worked in the studio, each of the band members was trying to express how they felt about the attacks and their consequences. It was Will who came up with the idea of a child asking his mother what was wrong with the world, the conceit that became the opening lyric of the song. As the song came together, it still seemed to lack one thing: a really powerful hook to up the emotional stakes. It was Taboo who solved this vacuum, but he had to work hard to convince Will his idea was a winner.
Taboo spoke to *NSYNC pin-up Justin Timberlake, who was planning to launch a solo career, and played him the song as it stood. His task to Timberlake was to come up with a ‘Marvin Gaye-style’ chorus to complete the song. Within an hour, Timberlake had done so. However, when Taboo excitedly phoned Will to tell him the news, Will was less than excited. At first, he – inaccurately – dismissed Timberlake as ‘the dude from Backstreet Boys’. Taboo convinced Will to hear him out and, two weeks later, Timberlake joined the band in the studio. The session got off on a bad footing, due to the fact that Timberlake had just split from his famous girlfriend, Britney Spears. At first, he was more interested in speaking about his heartache than performing the chorus he had written. The band found themselves having to act as counsellors, rather than musicians, in order to ease Timberlake back into a more positive, and, therefore, creative, frame of mind. When he finally entered the booth to sing, he quickly dispelled Will’s fears. After he had sung his part, Will grinned in appreciation and told the proud Taboo that Timberlake’s performance was ‘dope!’.
In an interview with Faze magazine later, Will recalled his initial concerns about Timberlake’s inclusion. ‘At the time, nobody was checking for Justin,’ he said. ‘He had *NSYNC written all over his face. He was not cool in the urban world, not hip, not creative, not groundbreaking. I was like, why are we going to put Justin on “Where is the Love?”. You put Justin on it, you’re going to mess it up!’
They worked on further tracks and eventually came to the decision that they needed a female voice added to the track ‘Shut Up’. The names of various candidates were discussed, including Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger. In the end, they called singer Stacey Ferguson – also known as Fergie – to the studio to audition for the song. Fergie was, at this stage, only being considered to guest vocal on one track, as she had her heart set on a solo career, the launch of which she hoped Will would assist her in.
However, when producer Jimmy Iovine heard the track he not only considered it the stand-out song of the album – superior even to band favourite ‘Where is the Love?’ – but proof that Fergie should become a full-time member of the band. ‘You need to put that girl in the group,’ said Iovine. Will and his male bandmates were not immediately convinced. They decided to throw her in at the deep end by inviting her to join them onstage at a festival in Australia. Though they did not make this explicit to her, the simple truth was this: how she fared onstage would determine whether she would be invited to join the band or not.
As it turned out, Fergie slotted perfectly into their live unit and proved to have bags of charisma. Everyone agreed that she should be invited to join the band full-time. Despite her previous protestations that she was only interested in becoming a solo
performer, she accepted the invitation with relish. It was a big moment for her. She had enjoyed roles as a child actress, a television presenter and then as the de facto lead singer of a three-piece girl band called Wild Orchid – and she had developed a reputation as a wild one along the way, confessing to drug addiction and lesbian experiences.
In the future, her relationship with Will would be a stormy one. For now, though, she was warmly welcomed into the band’s line-up. Her appointment sealed the end of vocalist Kim Hill’s place in the band. Hill’s relationship with Will – which had begun with her considering him a ‘little brother’ – had declined. ‘Things started to get a little tricky with Will and I,’ she explained later to the Black Eyed Peas fan site, Portal Black Eyed Peas. ‘It was very difficult for me to stand onstage and perform, because I felt like the chemistry had been tainted, and once your audience doesn’t believe that what you projecting is organic, it’s just not gonna work.’
With the line-up complete, the band changed their name from Black Eyed Peas to The Black Eyed Peas. Whatever their name, the group were about to experience a surge in their popularity and fame. That surge began in the summer of 2003, when they released the first single from Elephunk, ‘Where is the Love?’ The band had been invited to be the opening act for the joint-headline tour of Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera. Over those forty-five dates, the band measured the growing impact of their new single by the response of the audiences as they performed it live as the final number of their twenty-minute set. The single – which was released two weeks into the tour – was receiving growing radio airplay. Each evening, more of the audience would be singing and dancing along.
The single reached number eight in the American Billboard charts. In the UK it went to number one and became both the bestselling single of the year and the twenty-fifth bestselling single of the millennium to date. It also reached the summit of the charts in several countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia. Will and his bandmates would regularly recite out loud the words: ‘Number one around the world’, just to see how it felt to say them. Eight years of hard work were finally paying off.
