There Will.i.am Be Blood
If this picture doesn’t make you hate will.i.am, or at least casually disdain his presence in the zeitgeist, then you, my friend, are a butthead. Because it’s fucked. No eight-year-old hopes to one day achieve such monumental fame and fortune that holding the Olympic goddamn torch bores him enough feel the need to check his smartphone. It’s like hatching a baby dinosaur and kenneling it just to watch reruns of M*A*S*H and beat off. That is not fulfillment. That is excess. That is the third act of a drama flick where the protagonist’s hubris becomes his undoing, so he beats Paul Dano to death with a bowling pin. Glory is fleeting, I’m finished, Rosebud. Et cetera.
It wasn’t always like this for Mr.i.am. But it was always destined to end up this way, and he knew it. Prophesized it, in fact. Back in the recesses of 2005’s Monkey Business, William Adams foretold his own undoing before he became the pop prince uber-douche he is today. And he did it with James Brown. But let’s start at the beginning.
Act one: We meet our hero. Elephunk was the first Black Eyed Peas release anybody gave a shit about, and it’s a pretty harmless album. “Let’s Get Retarded,” insensitively titled as it may be, is pure top 40 bait, and “Where Is The Love” is a kind-hearted attempt at depth with a music video that can only be described as “avant-garde Tumblr fodder.” will.i.am was fronting a group that made poppy pseudo-hip-hop your mom could get into, and everything seemed pretty okay.
Act two: our hero falters. 2005 saw the release of the BEP’s Monkey Business, and this is where shit’s about to get debatable, because I don’t think anything on this album is outright evil, either. Some might argue “My Humps”is one of the most cynical tracks released in the last decade, but judging by the goofy music video and absurd milk-and-cocoa puffs metaphor, I’d argue differently. The Peas were testing the boundaries of their success, seeing how much over-the-top bullshit they could get away with, like John Lennon claiming popularity over Christ or Jason Mraz adopting the fedora. Hubris, certainly, but not the sonic abortion The E.N.D would become.
Teddy Pendergrass in hospital, surrounded by nurses, after he was paralyzed in a motor vehicle accident. Photo by Neal Preston.
