Hey remember the other day when I was saying how frustrating it is that the Will.I.Am / Nicki Minaj song is less than 100% amazing? We had some laughs, right? It was all in good fun. Nobody got hurt, there were no permanent injuries and we all went away assuming Will would soon bounce back, that he would save his best ideas for the next Black Eyed Peas opus.

I wish those innocent days were still with us. I wish I still believed such a turnaround were possible. I wish, in fact, that I had never ever heard this deeply terrible song, which is so very poor that it has come close to destroying a perfect relationship with the band’s finest moment to date – the mighty ‘Boom Boom Pow’.

I take no pleasure in saying it. I’m an optimist by nature and try to be fair, up to a point. I mean clearly some things are not going to be to my taste, and I’m fine with that. But it’s hard to see whose taste this will appeal to. People who hate music? People who are a long way away? It’s baffling.

(Here’s the official audio. Don’t listen to it. It hurts.)

I don’t even mind the wholesale pinching of ‘(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life’ from Dirty Dancing. That’s just a standard jump-off point for yer modern hip hop production. The real horror comes in when you have to make the lumpy transition from that wobbly rubbish portamento thing in the verses, to the rubbish shouted “I’M! HAVING! A GOOD! TIME! WITH YOU!” bit, and THEN the stuttery, edited vocals of the chorus, which are also rubbish.

It is so rubbish, in fact, it has left me wondering what I’ve done to hurt music’s feelings this much. It’s so bad it makes me want to go up to the art of popular song and hit its face off with a rubber mallet. It’s so bad that it runs the risk of spoiling all other music forever.

It’s a great big squirt of bleach in the delicious gumbo of pop. The fact that it arrives in a puff of self-regard and leaves without having the foggiest idea what a disgusting stench it leaves it its wake makes everything somehow worse.

I’ll leave the final word to Apl, a man who is already on thin ice after that rap in which he boasts about not “messing with the maggots” because he’s in with “the baddest chicks in the club”. It just makes me assume that he said a more offensive word originally, and a wise head in the BEP camp made him change it.

“Mirror mirror on the wall,” he intones, “who’s the baddest of them all?”

Well we all know the answer to that one, don’t we? Shall we say it together? On the count of three…one, two…

Download: Out now

www.blackeyedpeas.com
BBC Music page

(Fraser McAlpine)

Only VIP Media says: “It’s a hot mess.”

Pop From The Block says: “If this robotic nonsense wasn’t the creation of the Black Eyed Peas, it would most probably be shunned by the media.”

View full post on BBC Audio & Music | Radio 1 Chart Blog

Will.I.Am and I have a lot in common. We’re both very clever, but also a bit stupid, we both like computers and music, and we both have very short attention spans. Luckily for me, wandering off the point is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to thinking about pop music. Actually making it takes a bit more focus.

The frustrating thing about some Black Eyed Peas songs can be how wildly they vary in quality from moment to moment. The band are frequently very good at coming up with a refrain or a beat or a squelchy bass quack which twangs on the brain’s thrilltacular ganglion like the elastic on a catapult. They will then bring in one of the band to try and rap against this, as if trying to prove they can literally nail any cloud to any frog and come up with a new kind of milkshake.

Sometimes they do, and that’s great, but sometimes…eesh! There’s a verse here where Will raps bouncily about making your body rock/taking it to the top, first with his natural voice, then with the robot-lady voice. Trouble is, next to the martial rhythm of the hi-hats it just sounds a bit saggy and a bit strange. And not wow-fresh-amazing strange. Ramshackle strange.

And haven’t they already got someone who can handle the higher vocal frequencies? Is there any need to break out the yodel-vocoder for the chorus when Fergie is sat over in the corner and sighing pointedly? Especially when her contribution to ‘Boom Boom Pow’ was the best bit of one of the best singles of the whole year.

On that note, Here’s the video. It’s actually two videos, for ‘Imma Be’ and ‘Rock That Body’, with a brilliant introductory skit in which Will.I,Am is showing off a new box which can make music for him. He puts in all of his singing ability, and “the whole English vocabulary”, and it can churn out Black Eyed Peas songs from now until kingdom come.

Naturally the rest of the band are not impressed, because it reduces their role to mere arm-waving sidemen who don’t do a right lot on their own records. I know, it’s a thread you would think the band would want to avoid pulling AT ALL COSTS, but there we are.

Anyway, the skit thing is funny on two levels: the intentional one where we all enjoy the joke that a computer could actually do something like that and replace the human heartbeat at the core of all musical endeavours, and the unintentional one, where we all enjoy the joke that a box with these capabilities would need to use more than 30 words in the English language to cover the entirety of Will’s lyrical output to date. And his singing range – unaided – isn’t exactly going to tax the box’s memory banks either.

Where was I? Oh yes, the SONG. It’s a party banger, innit. Defies rational explanation because it’s not aimed at the brain, it’s aimed at body parts which are closer to the ground. Those parts are very well served, and as usual it’s a pretty sumptuous production.

With that in mind, here’s a final detour: the “I wanna rock right now” bit, is not a million mies away from a similar bit in a song called ‘Play Some D’ by Brassy, which was out a very long time ago and never really did ‘the business’, here or in the States. I’m not claiming any inspiration theft by the Peas, of course, it’s just a nice reminder of a brilliant band from back in the olden days. Enjoy!

Download: Out now
www.blackeyedpeas.com
BBC Music page

PS: If you can, trying putting this on a playlist in front of Bombay Bicycle Club’s ‘Evening Morning’. The juxtaposition of songs is really quite lovely.

View full post on BBC Audio & Music | Radio 1 Chart Blog

Photo: Brown/Getty

Black Eyed Peas reveal the second North American leg of their The E.N.D. jaunt, Hot Chip add some April dates to their One Life Stand tour and Melvins plan to hit the road this June in support of their upcoming album, The Bride Screamed Murder. Full details for all three treks, below.

Black Eyed Peas
July 27, 28 – Toronto, ON @ Air Canada Centre
July 31 – Montreal, QB @ Bell Centre
Aug. 1 – Ottawa, ON @ Scotiabank Place
Aug. 3 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
Aug. 4 – Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
Aug. 6 – Hartford, CT @ XL Center
Aug. 7 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Boardwalk Hall
Aug. 10 – Baltimore, MD @ 1st Mariner Arena
Aug. 11 – Buffalo, NY @ HSBC Arena
Aug. 13 – Chicago, IL @ Allstate Arena
Aug. 14 – St. Louis @ Scottrade Center
Aug. 18 – Winnipeg, MB @ MTS Centre
Aug. 20 – Saskatoon, SK @ Credit Union Centre
Aug. 22 – Calgary, AB @ Pengrowth Saddledome
Aug. 23 – Edmonton, AB @ Rexall Place

Hot Chip
Apr. 16 – Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater
Apr. 19 – Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
Apr. 20 – Toronto, ON @ Koolhaus
Apr. 22, 23 – New York, NY @ Terminal 5
Apr. 24 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
Apr. 25 – Philadelphia, PA @ Theater of the Living Arts

Melvins
June 1 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah
June 2 – Tempe, AZ @ The Clubhouse
June 3 – Albuquerque, NM @ The Launchpad
June 5 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s
June 7 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live
June 8 – Baton Rouge, LA @ Spanish Moon
June 9 – New Orleans, LA @ One Eyed Jacks
June 10 – Birmingham, AL @ Bottle Tree
June 12 – Manchester, TN @ Bonnaroo Festival
June 14 – Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
June 16 – Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
June 17 – Philadelphia, PA @ TLA
June 18 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall
June 19 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
June 20, 21 – Boston, MA @ Paradise
June 23 – Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
June 24 – Detroit, MI @ Small’s
June 25 – Chicago, IL @ Double Door
June 26 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
June 27 – Des Moines, IA @ House of Bricks
June 29 – Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
July 2, 3 – Calgary, AB @ Sled Island Festival
July 5 – Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre
July 6 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox at The Market
July 7 – Eugene, OR @ John Henry’s
July 9 – San Jose, CA @ Blank Club

View full post on Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

David Guetta joins BEP as a special guest during Madison Square Garden show.
By Jayson Rodriguez

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Will.I.Am and Fergie perform at Madison Square Garden Wednesday


Photo: Bryan Bedder/ Getty Images

Earlier this month, Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.I.Am told MTV News the collective’s The E.N.D. world tour would deliver “things flying and the stage transforming.” Well, the Grammy-winning group’s show came through New York’s Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night (February 24), and the futuristic performance lived up to the hype.

From the onset, when the four-person crew entered via platforms underneath the stage, to midway through the set when Will.I.Am freestyled rhymes based on text messages, the Peas put on a concert that was every bit as energetic as their pulsing tracks.

As the booming bass of “Let’s Get It Started” drummed up, Apl.de.Ap was the first BEP member to pop up onstage. He was soon followed by Taboo and Fergie. A billowing cloud of smoke enshrouded the stage as Will.I.Am joined his mates, complete with a “Phantom of the Opera”-like mask.

“Let’s get it started,” Fergie sang, as lights radiated from the stage into the crowd. “Let’s get it started in here.”

The onetime Eazy-E protégés (before Fergie joined the group) returned to their original lyrical pedigree halfway through their performance. Will urged fans to send text messages, and the words later appeared on gigantic screens in the arena. The producer then freestyled and incorporated the messages into his boasts.

Fergie took a brief moment during the Peas’ set to detour into a mini solo set of her own. She strutted down the runway that extended into the audience in blinged-out boots and an impossibly short metallic minidress. But Fergie was a part of the BEP family on this night and quickly returned to the set; the guys rejoined her onstage as they performed an encore to “I Gotta Feeling.”

Just before the group performed, David Guetta stirred things up as a surprise guest. The DJ announced to the crowd that he arrived from Paris to make it to the concert. He cued up his Kelly Rowland-assisted song “When Love Takes Over” and walked off, still on his turntables, as a crew collected his equipment and pulled Guetta offstage while the music was still playing.

Ludacris and LMFAO helped kick things off prior to that. The rowdy “I’m in Miami, Trick” party rockers did a brief set, including their hit “Shots.”

Ludacris pulled out a number of hits throughout his set, from “Move” to “Stand Up.” The Atlanta MC was sporting black jeans, sneakers, a leather jacket and a thermal shirt, but Ludacris’ mood didn’t match his dark outfit; he was easygoing and jovial throughout.

“I think this side over here is the livest one tonight,” Luda said.

Island Def Jam boss L.A. Reid, Universal/Motown chief Sylvia Rhone and former Warner Music Group executive Kevin Liles were among those in attendance to see ‘Cris. The “Sexting” star then closed things out with his breakout hit “What’s Your Fantasy.”

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View full post on MTV News