Show Black Eyed Peas bring it home Geoff Boucher Los Angeles Times The man they call WillIAm has one of the busiest hard drives drives drives dri dri- ves in hop hip-hop these days and he carries it with him in a case marked Wills Travel Kit Last weekend the leader of the Black Eyed Peas slid behind the keyboard of a computer in the mobile music studio that follows follows follows fol fol- fol- fol lows him on tour loaded up the drive and clicked through a directory of his dizzying work work- load There were chunks of the new songs hes he's producing for forNas forNas forNas Nas Justin Timberlake Snoop Dogg Macy Gray and Diddy as asell aswell aswell well ell as a theme song hes he's producing producing producing pro pro- for the Wolfgang Petersen film Poseidon and recent hes he's done for the Rolling Stones Michael Stipe of REM and Busta Rhymes But the hard drive is more than music projects Will clicked on a video file This is the Adidas campaign I did for forthe forthe forthe the World Cup he said bringing bringing bring bring- ing up an image of kids playing soccer on a dusty field with their kicks keyed to a pulsing Latin-flavored Latin soundtrack And this one is a short film I Idid Idid Idid did with Snickers they're doing films because TiVo is killing commercials The vagaries of the advertising world are important to Will because the Black Eyed Peas are corporate Americas America's leading hop hip-hop partner partner partner part part- ner and proud of it The Peas are now on the Honda Civic Tour a city 35 tour kicked off last week in Fresno Calif and ending in Colorado in May and they have 7 i k by r f I- I 6 i i L n I E Erh E Et t rh rt 7 III m mi i k rc C c ii c f yf yE I Q 4 I it o III l J Black Eyed Peas sing for fans done commercials for Apple and Best Buy They rewrote one of their songs to accommodate a major advertising campaign They are also characters in a video game The Sims in the City they have performed at the Super Bowl and on Sunday afternoon in San Diego Willand Willand Will Willand and the other three members of the group met with executives of the Hard Rock Hotel to go over plans to create a Black Eyed Peas suite As Fergie the groups group's female singer examined a swatch of faux chinchilla fur Will told a surprised Hard Rock official that the planned multimedia experience for the room wasn't ambitious enough Is there any anyway anyway anyway way to hook the room up to my hard drive so I can pick what people see and hear when they stay in the suite I mean its it's our suite The members Will groups group's Fergie Taboo and grew up in Los Angeles Will said growing up in the city's urban grid primed them to view the world through brand names In Beverly Hills do you have billboards on every damn comer corner Do you have posters on every wall selling stuff in the suburbs Well you do where I grew up he says In the urban areas everything is signs for liquor stores and motels and ads for sneakers and cars and Schlitz malt liquor They're selling selling selling sell sell- ing you stuff your whole life lifer So hop hip-hop made it part of its culture The Peas have a rare spot in hip rup Separate in themes and vibe from the scene that long dominated rap the group found it hard in the to capture a mass audience While they were waiting for positive ive hop hip-hop to make its mark in America they toured the rest of the world w which ich most rappers ignore or find The world caught on before the United States caught on and the beauty of being able to travel travel travel trav trav- el the world was that we turned around that whole concept that you have to be big here first Taboo said In Vietnam we can go and get big audiences and weve we've been going there forso for forso so long A lot of other hop hip-hop groups dont don't even go And that helps with the advertising too We have a global audience we travel and our name trav trav- els The Peas also love to come home Wednesday night they played the second show of a sold-out sold two-night two stand at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles It was their first time as a headliner at the venue and it was clear they were excited about coming back to play to a hometown crowd Fresh off a Grammy win i in n February the band comes home on a career trajectory that h has as made it one of the stars of th the e moment in music The Peas had the selling fifth-best-selling album o of f last year in the United States and their appeal to young music consumers is clear in the fact that their song My Humps is the first master tone ring-tone to break the threshold of 2 million tones sold Will and ApI were known asWill asWill as asWill Will Adams and Allen Pineda when they began rapping together in eighth grade in 1989 Three years later they were signed to Es Eazy-E's Ruthless Records and performed performed per per- formed in a trio called Klann but the label cooled on the group because its themes seemed out of touch with the rap on the radio and on the charts By the middle of the decade Jaime Gomez aka a.k.a. Taboo became the third member member member mem mem- ber and the group had the more soulful name of Black Eyed Peas The Peas received critical acclaim for their albums in 1998 and 2000 but their major commercial success came with the addition of their fourth member Stacy Fergie Ferguson who had been in a teen-pop teen group called Wild Orchid and also was a performer performer performer per per- former on the Disney Channel show Kids Incorporated Fergie ergie has become so popular that she is preparing a solo albu album and and Will has as a producer J My party after-party will ill be in 1 10 id d years and it will be sick Ill I'll have to buy an island for my party Until then I got to keep working Will spun his chair back to face his computer screen Work work work |