Black Eyed Peas — “I Gotta Feeling”

Are bad lyrics good lyrics? That’s the question Rob posits as he tackles the Black Eyed Peas, who may have mastered the art of good-bad songwriting. He looks back on how the Peas jumped from hip-hop to pop after they added Fergie to their crew, until they ultimately hit dance music in 2009—but they maintained their goofy sensibility the whole way. Later, Rob’s joined by columnist Leslie Gray Streeter to discuss the merits of “My Humps” and why “I Gotta Feeling” has come to represent the Obamacore era. (00:00) Intro: Lyrics so bad that ... maybe they're good? (21:12) This week’s song: “I Gotta Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas (24:57) BEP’s early hip-hop days (39:05) Shifting to pop and recruiting Fergie (51:54) The wonderfully dumb ‘The E. N. D.’ and “I Gotta Feeling” (01:00:24) Interview with Leslie Gray Streeter (01:32:58) Outro Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Leslie Gray Streeter Producers: Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, and Olivia Crerie CONNECT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/60songsthatexplainthe90s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@60songsthatexplainthe90s Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:07Speaker 00

  Hello friends, a quick note to say that 60 Songs is now available on YouTube. We made it. Success. That was easy. You can now watch full episodes of this show on YouTube and you can also check out our new social media accounts on Instagram and TikTok, all using the name 60 Songs that explain the 90s. We have heard your cries of despair and confusion and we have therefore embraced various popular online platforms. So, watch us on YouTube, check us out on TikTok and Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky and Twitter still under the name Harvilla, H-A-R-V-I-L-L-A, but maybe stay out of it. I don't know.

• 0:48Speaker 00

  We'll put all the links for these in the episode description as well. Thanks for listening and/or watching and we'll see you on the internet.

• 0:57Speaker 01

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• 1:29Speaker 02

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• 2:01Speaker 00

  You get these random, perfect, absurdly idyllic moments when it all just clicks into place. You know, the perfect song at the perfect time, a sonic thunderbolt of total serenity. And it's even better when it's a totally mundane situation, right? When the right song turns a laughably ordinary activity into something extraordinary and unforgettable. So I'm driving my kids home, my two teenage sons and my five-year-old daughter. Early evening, we're tooting along in the minivan. We're passing a modest Ohioan, but lovely and peaceful-looking body of water. We're bathed in the celestial light

• 2:40Speaker 00

  of a marvelous technicolor sunset. I got the stereo on and I am regaling my children with various beloved pop songs of my youth and young adulthood. But then one of my sons, he asks for a song and I put it on and boom, the minivan goes silent. The song commands our full attention. I get these instant goosebumps. I am overwhelmed by a sense of absolute contentment. The sunset glows with greater intensity and spiritual import. I can feel this song and this moment imprinting in my memory and in my kids' memories. It's

• 3:21Speaker 00

  awesome. And as we silently enjoy this perfect song and this perfect moment together, what I'm mostly thinking is, are these lyrics dumb?

• 3:31Speaker 03

  It's nine o'clock on a Saturday. Regular crowd shuffles in. There's an old man sitting next to me, making love to his tonic and gin.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  My son requests "Pianoman," a beloved 1973 hit from one William Joel. Why does Billy Joel look so pale and frigid and perhaps even deceased on the cover of his 1973 album, "Pianoman"? Why does he look like a marble statue of a member of My Chemical Romance? But more importantly, "There's an old man sitting next to me, making love to his tonic and gin." Is that dumb? Are these bad lyrics? How does one make love to an alcoholic beverage? Don't answer that. And are you annoyed when Billy Joel sings tonic and gin just so it rhymes with the regular crowd shuffles in? You know who got annoyed about that? You

• 4:32Speaker 00

  know who quite frankly got a little bitchy about the tonic and gin? Bernie Taupin, longtime superstar lyricist for one Elton John. Bernie Taupin did an interview with Vulture in 2023 and he talked about how he hates it. When people in pop songs say, "I'll die if you don't love me," because of course you won't literally die. That's ridiculous. That's not true. Bernie hates that. When you say, "I'll die if you don't love me," Bernie doesn't believe you. And then the Vulture interviewer asks Bernie, "Are there other things in pop songs that drive you crazy?" And Bernie Taupin says, quote, "There was a Kenny Rogers song, 'The Gambler.' The first line says something about a train bound

• 5:15Speaker 00

  for nowhere. What do you mean?" That train is going somewhere, man. I know that's supposed to be a metaphor, but it's still dumb. Also, there are rhymes where you go, "Well, that was done purely to find a word to rhyme with that earlier line." That's like Billy Joel writing "Making Love to His Tonic and Gin" instead of "Gin and Tonic" in "Pianoman." One of the worst ever. Because who says tonic and gin? "I'd kill myself rather than do that," end quote. Yo, that's pretty rude, Bernie. Hey, let's play some Elton John, shall we?

• 5:56Speaker 03

  If I was a sculptor, but then again, no.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Here we have your song, released in 1970 and written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin. "If I was a sculptor, but then again, no." Is that dumb? Are these bad lyrics? Does Elton John go heh in the middle of that line because he knows it's dumb? Have you ever heard the Elton John song, "I Am Your Robot"? Also co-written with Bernie Taupin and released in 1982. Did Elton John invent cyberpunk?

• 6:38Speaker 00

  I am your robot and programmed to love you.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  Bit of a deep cut from Elton there. Do you think his serial number is 44357 just so he can rhyme something with seven later? Let's not find out. Are those lyrics dumb? Are most song lyrics dumb? I don't take much offense to Billy Joel's tonic and gin, actually. I have more pressing concerns. For example, what exactly is a real estate novelist?

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Now Paul is a real estate novelist who never had time for a wife.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Seriously, does that mean he's a real estate guy trying to be a novelist? Or does that mean he writes novels about real estate? Is the phrase "real estate novelist" dumb? Does that phrase take you out of the song? Anyway, what a startling, beautiful moment I had with my kids in the sunset and "Pianoman." I was 100% spiritually locked in with my family and I was also trying to decide if those lyrics are dumb. I can multitask. Are song lyrics better when they're dumb? Do we really want song lyrics to make logical sense? Song lyrics are not supposed to be assessed in terms of logic or believability

• 8:06Speaker 00

  or coolness. If I say, "These song lyrics are dumb," that's just another way of saying, "These song lyrics are memorable." And that's just another way of saying, "These song lyrics are good." Any inherent cringiness is a feature, not a bug. Like, are we as a society still talking about the John Cougar Mellencamp song, "Jack and Diane," nearly 45 years later? If John Cougar Mellencamp doesn't suck on a chili dog outside the Tasty Freeze? Sucking on chili dog outside Tasty Freeze. That's so gross, dude. There had to be a better way to put it. Just eat the chili

• 8:48Speaker 00

  dog like a normal person, John. But was there a better way to put it? Do you really want a pop song where a normal guy eats a chili dog in a conventional manner? What percentage of the modern-day discourse about "Jack and Diane" is chili dog sucking based? Now that's gross. There had to be a better way for me to put that. Remember a few years back when that guy went viral for singing "Jack and Diane," but he changed pretty much all the lyrics to sucking on a chili dog?

• 9:28Speaker 04

  Sucking on a chili dog, sucking on a chili dog. Sucking on a chili dog.

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  Here we have Tom McGovern, a comedian, musician dude I really dig. I dig how serious and soulful and pensive this dude looks as he sings that line over and over again in what appears to be his closet. Are most song lyrics dumb? Are song lyrics better when they're dumb? Do you really want song lyrics that are logical and reasonable and non-cringey and clever? There's a line from the movie Fight Club that I think about a lot. Hold on. Hold on, not that line, or that line, or that line either. I don't think about Fight Club in a weird creepy predatory red flag men's rights sort of way.

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  No, I think about the part of Fight Club when Edward Norton first meets Brad Pitt on a plane and they discuss the relative merits of being clever.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Tell you are by far the most interesting, single-serving friend I've ever met.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  To have this thing, everything on a plane is single-serving, even the- Well, I get it. It's very clever. Thank you. How's that working out for you? What? Being clever.

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  Brad Pitt looking ludicrously handsome while wearing sunglasses on a dimly lit airplane and saying, "How's that working out for you, being clever?" With a deadpan contemptuous facial expression, that always stops me from being clever for a couple hours at least. You think you want clever pop song lyrics, but usually you don't. You think you want not dumb sounding pop song lyrics, but you don't. The dumber, the better, in my opinion. The dumber, the more profound. It's a simple equation, really, when it comes to pop songwriting. Dumb equals good. Dumb equals sign good. Therefore, worst equals best.

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  Worst lyrics equals sign best lyrics. Yes, that means you, 50 Cent.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  We only humans, girl, we make mistakes. To make it up, I do whatever it take. I love you like a fat kid love cake. You know my style, I'll say anything to make you smile.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Here we have a song called "21 Questions", released in 2003 by the famous and handsome and not at all vindictive superstar rapper 50 Cent. "I love you like a fat kid love cake." I used to hate that line. I used to say all the time that I hated that line. I used to think that hating something and repeatedly saying you hated something were the same thing. In another lifetime, during my twenties and thirties, in a completely different and now virtually unrecognizable era of human history, the 2000s, back then I would have told you that "I love you like a fat kid love cake" was dumb. I would have told you that was a bad line. 50 Cent, please do not get mad at me.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  Worst line in a rap song ever. And you have to wonder if it ever occurred to me that maybe I kept complaining that "I love you like a fat kid love cake" was bad because it's actually good. Worst equals sign best. On December 29th, 2009, I announced, in my capacity as music editor of The Village Voice, a previously reputable New York City newspaper, I published a March Madness-style bracket of the worst lyrics of the decade, 2000 to 2009. Worst pop music lyrics of the decade, according to me. I'm pretty sure I know one of the two songs I had playing for the championship, and I'm

• 13:14Speaker 00

  100% certain I don't want to talk about it.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  Let me stop you right there, Liz Phair. Excuse me. For her sake and for my sake, and most importantly, for your sake, let's not. Seriously. Here we have a Liz Phair song from 2003 called "HWC". I'd hate to tell you what that stands for, and so I won't. At the time, back in the 2000s, I would have told you repeatedly, loudly, professionally, I would have told you that the lyrics to "HWC" were bad. I found this particular Liz Phair song to be tasteless and prurient and grody and also dumb. And so I dropped "HWC" into a March Madness bracket of the worst song lyrics of the decade,

• 14:18Speaker 00

  along with other songs. Here's my problem, one of them. This worst lyrics bracket I whipped up was technically a graphic, which means on the internet it was an image file, which means that now it's a broken image file. So I reached out to a very nice woman who works at The Village Voice, and I asked her if she could please check the archives and maybe send me a scan or something. And she responded politely that she could offer me a high-res PDF of my article for $250.

• 14:53Speaker 00

  So let's imagine what else I might have put on a worst song lyrics of the 2000s bracket in 2009. I got some theories. One theory is that I got all bitchy about grammar.

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  Perhaps I pedantically observed that it is grammatically incorrect when Alicia Keys sings "Concrete jungle where dreams are made of", in the chorus to Jay-Z's 2009 number one hit "Empire State of Mind". But doesn't that lyrical clunkiness only underscore the elegance and triumph of "Empire State of Mind"? In the grand tradition of Paul McCartney singing "This Ever-Changing World in Which We Live In", or Lady Gaga singing "You and Me Could Write a Bad Romance", don't you hate it when people get all grammar cop about pop songs? Speaking of cops-

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Nashville rock band Hot Action Cop with their breakout 2003 single Fever for the Flava, which we discussed quite recently in a previous episode in what in retrospect was perhaps excessive detail. I took a screenshot of the Fever for the Flava video. I went, "I wanna bubba bubba bubba bubba hoohey." I reveled unnecessarily in the gleeful, wanton, heroically psychedelic boorishness of Hot Action Cop. That song is dumb. I'm not aware of too many things, but I know what I know, if you know what I mean. Ladies and gentlemen, Nickelback.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  That's a Nickelback song from 2008 called "Something in Your Mouth", also previously discussed on this program. It's the way all the instruments drop out briefly to heighten the anticipation, to accentuate the butt-rock melodrama, to bolster the seismic impact of the phrase "with something in your mouth". Nickelback, though, come on, too easy. I dig Nickelback, actually, and those dudes are reliable, critical punching bags to the point of cliche. Let's maybe try sassing somebody who rock critics actually historically enjoy. Ladies and gentlemen, Lucinda Williams.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Here we have beloved god-tier singer-songwriter and American treasure Lucinda Williams with a 2008 song called "Honeybee", that is perhaps too sticky for my taste. She sings with absolute ferocious conviction, Lucinda does always, up to and including the word "tummy". Yeah, I remember at that time either hearing or even just reading the lyrics to "Honeybee" somewhere, and I went, "Ooh", and then I gave it a 14 seed or whatever in my worst lyrics bracket. I'm noticing a theme here. I detect, quite frankly, a personal bias, a prudishness in my taste in song lyrics,

• 18:34Speaker 00

  a prudishness that is, quite frankly, at odds with every other aspect of my personality. Listen, I'm not saying these are all good lyrics necessarily. I'm not trying to convince you that Hot Action Cop are Pulitzer Prize material. I am not recanting, I am not renouncing my worst lyrics of the 2000s bracket, but are these really bad lyrics? If these song lyrics are bad enough that I remembered them and constantly complained about them and deployed them in various pieces of internet content, doesn't that kind of sort of make these lyrics good? Is cleverness overrated? Is dumbness underrated?

• 19:19Speaker 00

  In pop music, does bad equal good? Bad lyrics equals sign good lyrics? Question mark. Are the worst lyrics the best lyrics? And here's the most vexing question of them all.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  What you gonna do with all that junk? All that junk inside that trunk?

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I ain't buying no PDF for 250 bucks, but I know in my heart who won my worst song lyrics of the decade bracket. I am telling you for a fact that in 2009, I thought the lyrics to "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas were mega dumb. World historically dumb. This song offended my delicate sensibilities. It unnerved me. The way the bassline to "My Humps" goes bum bum, bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum. My humps made me question my sanity. And speaking of questions, what you gonna do with all that ass? All that ass inside them jeans?

• 20:39Speaker 00

  What you've just said, Will I Am and Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul. Are these the best pop music lyrics ever? If good equals sign bad and worst equals sign best, is "My Humps", the sound of the Black Eyed Peas winning a Pulitzer Prize while curing cancer and discovering cold fusion?

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  If previously the most profound question in pop music history had been, how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? Is it possible that this whole time, the correct answer was, "I'mma get, get, get, get you drunk? Get you love drunk off my hump?" This song is dumb as hell, man. Ya'uzza, this song freaks me out. The Black Eyed Peas freak me out. There's like 12 Black Eyed Peas songs that I will never forget for as long as I live, even if they make me feel stupider every time I hear them. These songs are the worst. These songs are the best? Question mark? I don't know, man. I don't know much.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  And in this ever-changing world in which we live in, all I've got, really, are feelings.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 52nd episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cold and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing "I Got a Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas from their 2009 album, The End. That's the E-N-D, which stands for the energy never dies. Sure, what you gonna do with all that ass? Perhaps get yourself some MeUndies ad break?

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• 24:16Speaker 00

  MeUndies probably doesn't do podcast ads anymore. That's an outdated reference. I apologize. In the year 1990, I turned 12 years old and I thought this was the best rap song of all time.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, as a pre-teen, I was most assuredly not a super dope homeboy from the Oak Town, but I nonetheless thought "You Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer was the greatest rap song and/or pop song of all time. And now, of course, I know that's not true, but a smaller and probably more important part of me still feels that to be true. And that's the whole ballgame with pop music, is it not? Feelings don't care about your facts. It is a grim but necessary rite of passage from naive youth to hardened adulthood when you realize that not everyone loves MC Hammer. Not everyone loves the way "You Can't Touch This" employs a brazen, obvious,

• 25:31Speaker 00

  not especially transformative sample of "Superfreak" by Rick James. Not everyone loves that MC Hammer is a crazy, huge pop star now who has further collapsed the cultural and commercial distinction between rap and pop. Not everyone loves the way MC Hammer throws around the word "proper."

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  Here we have beloved god-tier rap group and Queens icons, A Tribe Called Quest, explicitly sassing MC Hammer on their 1991 song, "Check the Rhyme." Q-Tip is rapping there. Q-Tip delivers the line, but in the "Check the Rhyme" video, it's the way Fife Dog contemptuously wipes his nose while Q-Tip says, "Rap is not pop. If you call it that, then stop." That's the real insult conveyed there to my beloved MC Hammer. Don't worry, though. MC Hammer will be fine.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  MC Hammer will be fine eventually. That's Hammer's somewhat less successful and awfully disconcerting 1994 single, "Pumps in a Bump", which always sounds way more like Tupac than I had anticipated. "Pumps in a bump walked so my humps could run." "Pumps in a bump humped so my humps could hump harder." All right, so best equals worst, dumb equals genius, but rap does not equal pop. Hmm, yes, maybe. Here now is a paragraph from the 2010 Rolling Stone cover story on the Black Eyed Peas, a cover story notably hyper-focused

• 27:26Speaker 00

  on Black Eyed Peas leader and visionary and chief songwriter, Will I Am. Quotes, "Until he was 14, smart, music-obsessed William James Adams Jr. wore a mom-enforced dress code of suits and an Afro. When this was repealed in 9th grade, he chose the flat-topped style he wears today, the Gumby, which perfectly complemented the harem pants ensemble he wore to his first live concert, a 1989 USC performance by a man he still calls an inspiration." "People are going to shit on me for saying this, but it's the fucking truth," says Will I Am.

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  "MC Hammer opened the door for all of us. Without Hammer, there wouldn't be Puffy. There wouldn't be me." End quote. Funny you should mention that, Will.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Here we have a song called Puddles of H2O. Released as a trial balloon single in 1994 by a young Los Angeles rap group called Atban Clan. On the hook there, we have a very young Will I Am, wearing cool sunglasses and a cool hat in the video, and then going by the name Will1X. That's Atban Clan, Clan with a K and two N's. Atban is an acronym for a tribe beyond a nation. I dig the medium funky upright bassline on Puddles of H2O, the quite explicit echoes of a tribe called Quest, and also the great semi-avant-garde LA rap group The Far Side.

• 29:11Speaker 00

  But once the fellas in Atban Clan start rapping, it gets a little dicey. It gets a little sticky. So hey, forget about it. Don't look it up. If you look it up, you will be sad. William James Adams is born in 1975. He is raised by a single mother in East Los Angeles. And from the onset, Will is notably musically omnivorous. He gets into breakdancing. He gets into early 90s rave culture. He gets into MC Hammer. In the eighth grade, Will joins a breakdancing crew with his Filipino-American friend Alan Pineda Lindo, better known as Apple De App. A.P.L. dot D.E. dot A.P. Copy editors hate to see these guys coming.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Will and Apple De App form the Atban Clan with their friends Mookie Mook and DJ Motivate. While still in high school, Atban Clan signed to Ruthless Records, the famed LA rap label notably co-founded by Eazy-E of N.W.A. fame slash infamy. But Atban Clan don't got so much of a brash, confrontational, gangster rap, fuck the police type vibe. And this single, Puddles of H2O, kinda tanks. And Atban Clan's purported debut album, called Grassroots, because of course it is. The record gets shelved, and Eazy-E passes away in 1995. And why don't we just try this again?

• 30:59Speaker 00

  All right. Much better. Here we have a song called Fallen Up, track one on Behind the Front, the jazzy, insinuous, and only slightly defensive debut album by the Black Eyed Peas. Released in 1998 on big shot major label Interscope Records. At the onset, the Black Eyed Peas are a trio consisting of Will I Am, Apple De App, and their Mexican-American friend Jaime Luis Gomez, better known as Taboo. Spelled normally. Thank you for that, Taboo. I don't know why the Fallen Up video looks like one of those old-timey sepia-tone photographs you can take at amusement parks where your family all dress up like gunfighters hanging out in a saloon.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  But there we had Will announcing, "We don't use dollars to represent. We just use our inner sense and talent." Immediately after clarifying that his group does not wear Tommy Hilfiger or baseball caps. What the early Black Eyed Peas aren't matters nearly as much to them as what the early Black Eyed Peas are. Here is Apple De App on a stuttering song called Movement asserting that he will not be molded by the nefarious major label pop crossover machine.

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  "You wanna change my appearance for the masters? Scope me out, undress me, then rearrange me. Nobody at any point is telling the Black Eyed Peas how to dress. I feel comfortable asserting that. These are delightfully weird-looking people. Fashion-wise and just vibe-wise, the bigger these fellas get, the more they look like extra flamboyant anime supervillains. I'm into it. There is a vibrant eclecticism, a grassroots-yet-science-fiction-futuristic eccentricity to the audio-visual vibe of this group from the very beginning, the very modest beginning. If you're building one of those Word Cloud visualizer deals for this first Black Eyed

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Peas record where the bigger the font, the more often that word appears. Here, all you would see is positive, positive, positive, positivity, positive, positive, positive, and also positivity. This album Behind the Front comes out in 1998, when Puff Daddy and Bad Boy Records and the whole glitzy, shameless, super-obvious-pop-sample-based shiny-suit era is popping off. And this record has very arduous De La Soul-type game show skits where the Black Eyed Peas take a few weak shots at Puff and Bad Boy. But whatever this group is supposed to be, it ain't all there yet.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  The devastating, tragic, culture-redefining deaths of the notorious B.I.G. and Tupac loom large as well. Here is Will I Am on a song called Karma, addressing the enemy.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  "You shot Tupac in Biggie. Now I'm coming after you like V W X Y Z. Is that dumb? You're gonna wanna decide right now whether you think that's dumb. You better lock in your personal dumbness calibration." The Black Eyed Peas 1.0 returned two years later, in 2000, with their sophomore album called Bridging the Gap. Even these album titles, Behind the Front and now Bridging the Gap, were thinking strategy and public perception and mainstream-averse self-definition and high-wire rap ecosystem positioning. Here on album number two, here we have Taboo, rapping on a song called Weekends, another

• 35:05Speaker 00

  delightful De La Soul echo from the title on down that also just so happens to be the first Black Eyed Pea song that totally succeeds as both a rap song and a pop song.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  The shot here in the Weekends video of Will and Apple De App and Taboo cram together at a nightclub table, in their clunky glasses, in Handmaid's Tale, bright red hats and headbands and whatnot. I dig the Black Eyed Peas quirky camaraderie tremendously. I dig the way they casually play off each other and genuinely appear to enjoy each other's company. It is abundantly clear already that Will I Am is running the show here as the visionary and primary producer and most prominent rapper. But a balanced, increasingly pop-curious, underground rap trio needs a guy who can rhyme. Selinas, Filipinas, they come one by one, all lined up and they ready for fun.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  And Taboo can do that. This song, Weekends, is also notable for featuring on the hook the playful LA via Ontario, Canada singer Esthero.

• 36:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is by some distance the catchiest early Black Eyed Pea song, but Esthero is only one of several prominent additional voices here on Bridging the Gap. We are building a coalition. We got DJ Premier. We got the great super-bass-voiced rapper Charlie Tuna from fellow rap group Jurassic Five. We got De La Soul. We got Mo's Deaf. We got Macy Gray, who's blowing up. But perhaps most importantly, most poignantly, we got the singer Kim Hill, a longtime friend of the Black Eyed Peas and if not quite a fourth member, then a frequent featured vocalist. Kim sang on three songs on the first album, and she's involved in the second album as well.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  It has not yet occurred to this group that they ought to just hire a full-time female vocalist, but by now that has occurred to pretty much everybody else. And Kim Hill very easily could have been the fourth and final piece.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  That song is called Hot, and that's not the cleverest hook you're ever gonna hear in your life in terms of like wordplay, but there is a synergy, a mind meld, a buoyant, hot-but-cool, cool-but-real bond between Kim Hill and these dudes. In 2019, Kim Hill collaborated with a New York Times opinion section on a mini-documentary, an op-doc they called it, headlined, "I Quit the Black Eyed Peas, Then They Became Famous." Kim talks about performing the song "Joints in Jam" with the Black Eyed Peas on Soul Train in 1998, where of course, Kim and the guys had to lip sync, but the guys made a big

• 38:31Speaker 00

  show of lip syncing poorly in a bid to convey some measure of integrity.

• 38:37Speaker 05

  Will looked in camera and just stopped singing.

• 38:46Speaker 05

  And you heard the track going to make it clear? We ain't really singing this? That was his way of making a point.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Black Eyed Peas on Soul Train in 98 captures both the wild joy and the obstinacy of this operation. The awkward yearning for mainstream stardom, but only on their terms. Or I guess ideally on their terms. Most of this Kim Hill documentary is just Kim in close up, addressing the camera with a striking mixture of incredulity and total understanding.

• 39:19Speaker 05

  The band was very specific about how we were looked at and received by people and being purist, which is why, once it started, the pressure started coming to like soften it up and make it super commercial was like, we're not really gonna do that, are we? And the guys were like, you don't have to go back to East LA if this doesn't work out.

• 39:42Speaker 00

  We are just about to bid farewell to the Black Eyed Peas 1.0, to say goodbye to the Black Eyed Peas and their initial underground rap oriented trio formation. And the billion dollar question here, because this group is about to make like a billion dollars, is how jarring a transformation is this gonna be, really? What's coming? Is it a total betrayal of what the Black Eyed Peas used to stand for? There's a song on this second album bridging the gap called Bringing It Back. It's of course being hip hop in its purest, most honest, most innocent, most noble form, unsullied by commerce.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  And the key line repeated before each chorus is, money is a drug and MCs is on it. Rap is not pop. If you call it that, then stop. But these first two Black Eyed Peas records don't sell well. And while money might be a drug, money is a drug that is both necessary and legal. And so here comes the pressure to soften it up and make it really commercial. And as the singer Kim Hill learns, that inevitably involves getting a little raunchier.

• 40:58Speaker 05

  It just started to get clumsy and messy. You want me to grind on Will I Am in a bathing suit? That was being asked of me, never by the guys. That was happening from an executive level. How far out on this plank do you want me to go?

• 41:15Speaker 00

  And so Kim Hill bails out. She tells the Black Eyed Peas management she can't do this anymore. She says, quote, "I never wanted to be objectified while doing my music," end quote. She quits. Meanwhile, the three Black Eyed Peas jump to the Interscope subsidiary A&M Records and their new label president and producer, a guy named Ron Fair. Ron co-produced A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton. Ron's legit. Ron is a few suggestions for the Peas and also a few hard truths. Talking to MTV News in 2004, Ron says, quote, "I asked them, how would you feel about taking a leap and going more into the pop world?

• 41:57Speaker 00

  They replied, we don't want to lose our credibility or our fan base. I said, well, if you don't take a shot at it, it's gonna get worse because the backpack crowd are the people who will download the records for free," end quote. And then he suggested that the Peas try working with somebody like, oh, I don't know, maybe Justin Timberlake.

• 42:34Speaker 00

  The third Black Eyed Peas album is released in 2003 and is called Ella Funk. Ella Funk with a P-H. Some changes have been made. This song is called Where Is The Love? It features Justin Timberlake crooning sensitively on the chorus. This song hits number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. It is nominated for two Grammys, including Record of the Year. And as I speak, it has amassed nearly 1.5 billion plays on Spotify. Also, the Black Eyed Peas are now officially a quartet.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  Please welcome Stacy Ann Ferguson, AKA Fergie, the fourth member of the Black Eyed Peas for a while. Fergie's around for the imperial era of the Black Eyed Peas, which starts now. Where Is The Love is the first single off this Ella Funk album. And on this song at least, Fergie is mostly used as a soothing, subtle background presence. Meanwhile, Will I Am kicks off his opening verse by rhyming mama with mamas.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Specifically, Will I Am rhymes mama, mamas, drama and trauma. Also, in 2006, the Black Eyed Peas make the cover of Blender Magazine and Will I Am's talking about Where Is The Love? And he says, quote, "I never thought that song was going to be played on the radio. If I did, I probably wouldn't have written that line calling the CIA terrorists," end quote. Success arrived abruptly and hilariously for the Black Eyed Peas. Talking to The Telegraph in 2016, Will I Am says that Where Is The Love was inspired by, quote, "the stress, the anxiety and the pain of 9/11," end quote.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  And this song quite earnestly attempts to respond to that stress, anxiety and pain with, in a word, positivity. Positive, positive, positive, positive positivity. Success arrives abruptly and hilariously for these fellows, but even after they get famous, you can still clearly hear the earnest, cornball, semi-underground dudes from those first two records. To my mind, the famous version of the Black Eyed Peas is not so much a betrayal of the non-famous version of the Black Eyed Peas. It's just that they get way better at doing the thing they've always been trying to do. It's just that now they're writing successful, huge, catchy, positive pop songs.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  And yeah, also now, they've got her.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  And indeed, here we have Fergie, not very subtly channeling Alicia Keys, on another huge Ella Funk single, a song eventually and mercifully known as Let's Get It Started. That's not the original title. The song's original title and hook features a tremendously unfortunate slur. If you know, you know, and if you don't, stay out of it. The original title of Let's Get It Started is one of the biggest what the fuck are you thinking moments in early 21st century pop. Clumsy and messy will always be a crucial component of the Black Eyed Peas experience. The Black Eyed Peas are an underground-coded, struggling rap group who add a white singer

• 46:37Speaker 00

  lady and immediately become a superstar blockbuster pop group. That is objectively what happens. But I will say that Fergie is an excellent and organic feeling addition to this group's established quirky, goofy, lovably corny camaraderie. Here's Taboo rapping on Let's Get It Started with a little Fergie popping up in the background. It seems like they're really, truly enjoying one another's company. She helps.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Step by step like an infant new kid is a very strange and kinda dumb line, but dumb equals good starting now. Fergie is born in Hacienda Heights, California, in the LA suburbs. She's a child star. She's on that children singing pop songs TV show Kids Incorporated. That's cool. She's the voice of Sally, Charlie Brown's little sister, in a bunch of Peanuts cartoons. That's really cool. And she's part of the early 90s R and B girl group Wild Orchid. Starting now, Fergie is a huge pop star and tabloid fixture with much lurid attention focused on her earlier struggles with crystal meth addiction. Talking to Blender Magazine, Fergie says she turned her life around because, quote,

• 48:07Speaker 00

  "I had a conversation with God," basically. "I don't know how to interpret this, but he said, I've given you this beautiful gift and you're throwing it away," end quote. In that same Blender cover story, Apple D App also talks about beating an addiction to crystal meth that he developed after the first two Black Eyed Peas albums flopped. And he talks about funding that addiction, partly with $100,000 the group got for doing a Dr. Pepper ad. The Black Eyed Peas experience is a proprietary blend of the sublime, the ridiculous and the harrowing. Let's mostly stick with the ridiculous, shall we?

• 48:59Speaker 00

  There are bigger additional hits on this Ella Funk record. I've been getting Hey Mama stuck in my head periodically to the point where I'm hesitant to play it for you, but I find myself drawn to this song called The Boogie That Be, in which Fergie raps with great enthusiasm and Will backs her up with great enthusiasm. Fergie and Will I Am are going to spend a lot of time now rapping very goofy, quasi-sexy lyrics with or at each other. But Will and Fergie nonetheless have an oddly appealing and weirdly chaste brother-sister vibe, even when they're rapping together about Fergie's...

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Humps. In that Blender article, Will says that he wrote "My Humps" while he was buying a burrito and standing behind a lady with, "The biggest butt I've ever seen in my life." End quote. I'm so happy he was buying a burrito. I cannot explain how happy it makes me that he was buying a burrito in this anecdote. The newly gargantuan Black Eyed Peas return in 2005 with their fourth album called Monkey Business. This song is called "Pump It." It's the radio edit. You'll figure it out.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Shout out surf guitar legend Dick Dale. Please note the great, big, shameless, obvious, and tremendously effective sample of Dick Dale's iconic 1962 version of the song "Miserlou." "Pump It" is the second-best pop culture reappropriation of "Miserlou" after "Pulp Fiction." Notice that "Will I Am" is directly addressing the haters and not for the first or last time. The Black Eyed Peas are getting saltier and saucier and huger and catchier and sillier. Pick any Black Eyed Peas video at random and it's a buffet of high-budget goofiness and priceless cornball camaraderie.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  Here's Will in some sort of flamboyant 70s game show host getup, doing the splits as he introduces Fergie singing a song called "Don't Funk With My Heart."

• 51:36Speaker 00

  That's all very silly, but I dig the beat there tremendously. The snare drum and tabula crunch of that beat. That's "Don't Funk With My Heart." P-H-U-N-K. I was listening to this song with my five-year-old daughter and she was like, "Daddy, they just said a bad word." And I said, "No, baby. They're saying funk. P-H-U-N-K." And my daughter's like, "They just said a bad word." And I'm like, "Yeah, you're right. They did." This Monkey Business record features both Talib Kweli and Jack Johnson, both James Brown and Sting. Rap is pop if it's the Black Eyed Peas doing it. You get both "My Humps," a monumentally dumb song about a curvy lady buying a burrito,

• 52:19Speaker 00

  and you get a song called "B-Bot," in which Apple D. App raps pretty much entirely in Tagalog.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  What Apple D. App is saying there, he first moved to LA to make money to support his family back in the Philippines, basically. That's very important, but the language he's saying it in is also tremendously important. The Black Eyed Peas made a bright and cheerful and goofy and extra-color saturated multicultural party-type video for this song. This song, rapped nearly entirely in Tagalog, appears on an album that sold 9 million copies worldwide. The Black Eyed Peas have softened up and gone commercial, just as their old friend Kim Hill feared. But you are unlikely to mistake the Black Eyed Peas for anybody else. They have not lost their fundamental eccentricity.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  They have not lost their fundamental and highly productive dumbness. In 2006, Fergie releases a solo album called "The Duchess," featuring a song called "Fergalicious," in which Will I Am very enthusiastically misspells the word "tasty" repeatedly.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  That's not how you spell tasty, my dude. There is no "e" in tasty. And yet I'd love this song, "Fergalicious," a little less if Will had spelled tasty correctly. Dumb equals sign good. The dumber the better at this point, if we're being honest. Even if you're a hater who insists the Black Eyed Peas are stooping to lowest common denominator pop cheesiness, you'd have to admit they're stooping so low they can see God. The Black Eyed Peas are playing 10th-dimensional chess at this point. The Black Eyed Peas are so 3008, whereas you're so 2000 and late.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  That is a magnificently dumb and perfect line from Fergie on a song called "Boom Boom Pow." From the band's fifth album, released in 2009 and called "The E-N-D," "The Energy Never Dies." How's that working out for you, being clever? Will I Am is on that next shit now, and that next shit is dance music. In that 2010 Rolling Stone cover story, Will talks about being in Australia while he was co-starring in the movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." Not a good movie. Not a bad equals good movie. But yeah, Will went to a hip-hop club in Australia and he realized hip-hop was out and electro was in.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Will says, "I came back hollering, 'Dance music, Jimmy. Dance music. Whoever cracks dance music wins.'" End quote. That's Jimmy Iovine, the superstar record producer. My favorite Will I Am moment on this album, "The E-N-D," is the way he rhymes "blog" with "job."

• 56:07Speaker 00

  I spent a long weekend recently just walking around going, "Why don't you put it on a blog? Rockin' like this is my job." But take that, haters. Take that as well. Intriguingly, my least favorite Will I Am moment is also on this song, "I'm a Bee," when he rhymes "Lehman," as in Lehman Brothers, the too-big-to-fail investment bank that collapsed and declared bankruptcy during the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Will rhymes Lehman with something I wish he hadn't rhymed with Lehman.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Oh my God. Listening to this song, "I'm a Bee," very recently, when I first realized what he rhymed with Lehman, I went, "Ugh." So loud that I alarmed my children. My kids were like, "What's wrong, Dad?" And I was like, "Music. Yes." It is 2009, and America has elected President Barack Obama to the great delight of many. And America is also weathering an ongoing epic financial collapse to the utter devastation of many. And so, this album, "The E-N-D," mixes cheeseball triumph with cautious resilience and mixes hornball glee with societal trepidation.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  Talking about this whole album and Rolling Stone in 2010, Fergie says, "It's meant as escapism. We specifically wanted people to forget about their money problems, losing their jobs, their homes." End quote. Because you can theoretically forget all that, at least for one night. The "woo-hoo" makes the whole song, in my humble opinion.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  The "woo-hoo" is essential. The "woo-hoo" sells both the drama and the escape from all the drama. "I Got a Feeling" is written and produced by the Black Eyed Peas alongside French dance music producers Fred Rister and David Gedda. Look, the Black Eyed Peas did not pioneer the concept of huge pop stars pivoting to mass-market EDM, but they're earlier than many of their peers. And "Will I Am" saying whoever cracks dance music wins in the late 2000s is a reasonably shrewd and prescient take on what pop music will sound like in the early 2010s.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  The fluidity, the malleability, the rampant changeability of the Black Eyed Peas has always been both their greatest weakness, according to their haters, and their greatest strength, according to their bank accounts. Genre vibe shifts aside, though, what's always struck me about "I Got a Feeling" is that it's not so much performed to you or for you as much as it's performed at you.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Mazel tov. Here we have the Black Eyed Peas live in Australia, I believe, or at least they're on Australian television. And this has always been my experience of I got a feeling, whether I'm hearing it on the radio, or on Saturday Night Live, or in a promo for the CBS Fall TV lineup. I got a feeling is four winsome, flamboyantly dressed pop stars just standing on stage and jumping up and down and shouting at you. This song has home invasion energy. You, the listener, are being violently confronted with tonight's goodness. Talking to Rolling Stone, Will I Am says, quote, "What is the easiest emotion to act? Anger. What is

• 1:00:26Speaker 00

  the hardest? Joy. That's because joy is complex. It's somber, sad, happy, heartbroken, hopeful. It's all those emotions in one. What you hear in I got a feeling, to me, that's joy. You're in pain, but tonight's going to be a good night. You can't feel happy when you've been pissed off the whole week. You have to go straight to joy." End quote. And it has to be a good night. It cannot be a great night. One cannot describe this night with a better, cleverer, more vivid and imaginative word for good. It has to be good. Not because good is the ceiling, not because

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  good is the best this night can get, it's because good is the best a night can possibly be. Good equals sign the best. This part cracks me up every time.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  The drank startles me every time. Fergie puts her whole hump into that drank. The two-second span from drank to la heim distills the very essence of the Black Eyed Peas, who they used to be, who they became, who they were always trying to be. And it won't last. The Fergie era of the Black Eyed Peas won't last. The EDM pop boom won't last. The hope and change-fueled good vibes of the Obama Corps era won't last. But we'll always have tonight, won't we? It's simple. But it's also not simple. Talking to Rolling Stone, Will I Am says, quote, "Lots of

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  people say Black Eyed Peas shit is simple. And I'll be like, no, fool. It's the most complex shit you could even fathom. That's the reason it works everywhere around the planet." End quote. Okay, fine, it's complicated. But I got a feeling is powered by the simple principle that all we want, everywhere, all around the world, is a catchy, soothing, empowering soundtrack as we kick back and make love to our tonics and gin.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  We are so delighted to welcome once again our dear friend, Lesley Grace Streeter, author and columnist for The Baltimore Banner. Her books include Black Widow, Family and Other Calamities, and her newest novel, Beignets and Big Feelings, which is out this coming Tuesday, October 13th. Lesley, welcome back, and thank you, as always, for being here.

• 1:03:08Speaker 05

  Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  We're always excited to have you. Lesley, is My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas a good song?

• 1:03:22Speaker 05

  Define good.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  Do you enjoy it while it is playing? Are you happy to be confronted by My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas?

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  And I will say confronting is the right word for that. I do feel

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:03:40Speaker 05

  like, you can't be neutral about a song about a butt. So let me take you back to Sir Mix-a-Lot.

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  Please, please do.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  Okay, so I'm going to compare butt songs. Okay, so Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back, in I believe 1992, was ostensibly a celebration by a man of the human, of the woman form. And those of us who were curvy were like, oh, my gosh, it's some sort of empowerment. Really, it was like, now I can objectify you openly like other people object skinny people. So is it a win? I don't know. But it was very clever. You know, my anaconda don't want none unless you got bum ton. And I love that the you can do side bender sit-ups, but please don't lose

• 1:04:27Speaker 05

  that butt. Because it's like, I'm not trying to stop you from being healthy, but but, but, but. My Humps is like the Etch A Sketch version of that song. It, you know, it's

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  It's bawdy, but in a stupid way. It's not really clever.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true. It's not really a double. And yeah, it's, it's pretty

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  No, it's just, my lovely lady lumps. That's not like a metaphor for anything. It's kind of just like, another thing to call, it's like what your boyfriend might call your butt. And it's, or it all could be your boobs, other lady lumps. I don't know. There's a lot going on in that song. But I will say it was inescapable. There's a lot going on right now with that song Chose in Texas that everyone is fighting about.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  Right. Have you heard this song? Yeah, exactly.

• 1:05:24Speaker 05

  Yes. And there's people, Rolling Stone was like, there's a reason people are saying they haven't heard it, like, because they haven't heard it. Because we are not in a monoculture anymore. We are far from the monoculture, where you are siloed by your algorithm and what you listen to. And at this point, I'm 55 years old. So I, the new music that I get is from my kid, and he's not listening to that. So, um, he's like, he's very in a Blink 182 right now, which is very funny. But

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. That's heartening. Is that, is that good? As a parent, are you pleased by that? Or are you unnerved by that?

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  It's, it's all gonna be like vulgar and stupid anyway. So it might as well be like fun, I guess. And it's like, and I know

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  The devil you know. Right, right.

• 1:06:13Speaker 05

  The devil I know. Okay. The other day in the car, he said, do you know that song that goes, uh, I would do most anything to get you back by my side? And I go, Boys Don't Cry by The Cure. And he goes, you know it?

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  Olivia Rodrigo doing God's work out there. Yeah.

• 1:06:34Speaker 05

  You know what? And I was like, played on the Cure version. He's like, oh, I like this. I like this. I'm like, of course you do. Anyway, back to the butt. Um,

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:06:43Speaker 05

  My Humps, My Humps was like the Black Eyed Peas, that version of Black Eyed Peas, engineered to fit into the 2000s, Girls Gone Wild, Hugh Hefner, Playboy, Girls Next Door, Trucker Hat, Car Dashing situation. Everything was like made in a lab. And that song was like, what if you got some butts and you get like some guys singing and you have some repetition? And then it becomes a hit. And it did become a hit. So all that long-windedness to say is that it is an effective pop song. Is it good?

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:07:22Speaker 05

  Objectively? No, it is not.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  Very good. Just a whirlwind historical tour of American history just now by you. What a beautiful journey we just took with My Humps. You told me that generally you find the Black Eyed Peas to be enjoyable, but I didn't always feel good about it. What do you mean by that? What made you feel not good about enjoying the Black Eyed Peas?

• 1:07:52Speaker 05

  Because there was absolutely nothing organic about the way, like I said, it was their sound, their personnel, everything appeared to be

• 1:08:05Speaker 05

  Created in a lab. It was like marketing. It was

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 05

  Focus grouped. It's like, okay, so we take our consciousness thing we did originally, we get rid of the black lead singer. We get a white girl. We make her curvy and pretty like the girls that are on TV and in music right now. Um, we do a little of the, as you mentioned, a little of where is the love? So it's like, look, we're singing about people. And then it's but and then it's like the song will talk later with the word I'm not going to say, but

• 1:08:37Speaker 00

  Thank you. Yeah.

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  It felt like, like Pump It, I think is a great song. I think, you know, the Muzra Lou sample.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  Dick Dale. Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 1:08:48Speaker 05

  Oh, God, that's a great song. That's a really like, that's a running song. That's a driving song. That's a really like musically. Now, did they create the most significant riff of the song? No, they did not. Did they figure out how to incorporate it into it? It basically goes pump it, pump it. Okay, great. Which reminded me of the nineties and the every pump up the jam, pump it, you know, whatever. It had all that in it.

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  Salt and pepper. Right. Yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  Salt and pepper. There's lots of pumping in the, in the eighties and nineties. That's what we were doing back then.

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  We were, I was listening to a lot of songs about pumping. There is a distinction there, but I take your point. Yeah, it was

• 1:09:28Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  A lot of secondhand pumping.

• 1:09:33Speaker 05

  It's like a drive by greeting, Mrs. Doubtfire.

• 1:09:37Speaker 05

  Um, you never know what you're gonna get with me when I'm on the show, dude. Um,

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  That's why you're back.

• 1:09:42Speaker 05

  But yeah, that, there you go. Um, I, I feel like there, they were solid pop hits. They were solid earworms. They were created to be listened to and they were played in that monoculture all the time. Everywhere. It was a huge crossover and it was in that type of radio inescapable. And also MTV was still a thing. So.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  It was right. This is the, the TRL era, kind of, maybe late in the TRL era, but still. I, did you have any relationship with the backpack rap consciousness era, like pre Fergie, Black Eyed Peas? Did you listen to them? Were you aware of them?

• 1:10:26Speaker 05

  I was slightly aware of them, but more so when they came out as the Fergie version. I looked them up because they, they're an interesting group of people. They're an interesting, interestingly put together people. This is not the Pearlman, right? This is not.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:10:44Speaker 05

  And it's like, this is interesting. So, yeah, so I, I went back and I, I looked them up. And I was like, oh, this is completely different from, because they reminded me, and I listened to some of their earlier stuff, reminded me of like Arrested Development and

• 1:10:58Speaker 00

  Totally, totally.

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  That kind of thing. And the Fujis even, there was a

• 1:11:06Speaker 05

  very specific, there were so many different influences to it, but it was solidly hip hop in that way, but to be open and it was very, I enjoyed it. Um, but it's a completely different thing. They made a choice to be a different thing.

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  I agree with you, but then I listened to the song like Where is the Love, right? Which I think was their big breakout as Fergie. And like, when you listen to the early records, it's all like, we're positive, positive, positive. Like, let's all get along. Like, Where is the Love? Seemed to me like just a successful version of what they'd already been trying to do. Like, in some ways, it's a total break with their past, but Where is the Love is interesting to me as just like a continuation. And like now they're doing the same thing, but they're just successful at it. You know what I mean?

• 1:11:56Speaker 05

  I think it's the gateway. I think it was the bridge between that. And because in the video, they're just like, they look so yearning. They're like, our children dying.

• 1:12:10Speaker 00

  They look very sad about the children.

• 1:12:12Speaker 05

  Very sad. And everybody is looking into the future, looking to see what is the love? Where is the love? And they're all like dressed, like Fergie has a lot of clothes on or at least an appropriate amount of clothes on.

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:12:26Speaker 05

  It is not, nothing sexual or

• 1:12:29Speaker 00

  It's formal by their standards. Yes.

• 1:12:31Speaker 05

  Yes, formal. It's the, the Black Eyed Peas tuxedo they're doing there. Um, but it's very, I think to me, it seemed like a test case, right? Like, let's put this out that bridges who we were with the new blonde addition. And that's unfortunately, it's a very Dreamgirls thing. It's like, let's do what we're doing, but let's put the skinny girl up front, you know?

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  That's a great, that's really

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  See what we're doing. And then as the dreams, it's one of my favorite movies. As, you know, they keep going, they adapt to disco and all this other kind of stuff. But the formula stays in place. The formula that was successful stays in place.

• 1:13:11Speaker 00

  It's a very complicated thing now, but like, are you pro or anti Fergie in general? Like, I, I, like, what she represents in that changeover is, is a very fraught thing, but like, what do you think made her the perfect person for like the pop superstar era of this band?

• 1:13:30Speaker 05

  Well, you know, and I've been thinking a lot about this. Um, okay. So for Stacy Ferguson starts as a member of Kids Incorporated. A nineteen eighties kids variety show thing, also with Martika.

• 1:13:43Speaker 00

  Really? The toy soldiers lady? Okay. Oh, that was a great show. Okay.

• 1:13:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, she was then Marta, I think Marta Rivera. And then their name is Marta. And then Mario Lopez playing the drums, Jennifer Love Hewitt, a woman named Renee, whose name, last name, I can't remember, but she and Fergie were then in a group called Wild Orchid.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:14:07Speaker 05

  Which was terrible. Have you ever seen, there's a video, Rob, I gotta send you this thing. I gotta see this video that goes around once a year on social media of, it was Stacy and Renee and whoever the third young lady was, and they're singing. And it, they look like an SNL or Matt TV parody of a group singing Christina Aguilera. It was everything. It was the nineties lip liner and the big hair and they were like

• 1:14:37Speaker 05

  and their mouths were moving wildly and specifically within the lip liner, lip liner-ing. And it was terrible. But I thought, so when I saw her and I recognized her as Kids Incorporated Stacy and also like Fergie, that's interesting. That's Ferguson. But then I realized that she had, I remembered that she had a really good voice. And I had watched her sing since she was a kid. So that voice was in there. But it became more refined and more refined and she had more control of her voice, which is what happens the older you get. And so by the time she got in Black Eyed Peas, she was not as

• 1:15:17Speaker 05

  just specu- just speculating wildly vocally.

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  She had toned it down, which is a strange thing to say about Fergie, but she had, yeah.

• 1:15:26Speaker 05

  Dude, she had toned it down and she got better. She has a very powerful voice. She has that very much, um,

• 1:15:35Speaker 05

  that, once again, the Christina Aguilera kind of a pop ten soul voice, not like Christina Aguilera's voice, because no one is like that.

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:15:44Speaker 05

  All the melisma. Um, by the time she does solo stuff, uh, The Duchess is a kick ass album. I love that album. I

• 1:15:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:56Speaker 05

  And it's weird, but like Big Girls Don't Cry was the anthem of a really stupid breakup I had. You know, where I'm driving going, you know, it was amazing.

• 1:16:11Speaker 00

  I'm sorry that happened to you, but that's a great song for that moment. Yeah, I'm so glad Fergie was there for you at that time in your life. Okay.

• 1:16:18Speaker 05

  And I, it's not like she went completely on her own, wrote everything, produced everything. She's still someone who's being produced and planned and stuff, but there was still her on her own was less like girl in the group under a male gaze, even though she's still under the male gaze, if that makes sense. Maybe it doesn't make sense, but

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  I know, I know exactly what you're saying.

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  And the songs were better. The songs were better, I think. Um, to me, the songs are better, but, um, no, I, yeah, what she represents as being a blonde, curvy, white girl, replacing a black woman in a group that is multicultural and being now the obvious Beyonce-esque, Dina Jones, Dreamgirls focus is gross. But, you know, I, I'm, I will belie my Gen X, um, tendency to call anything a sellout. Because that's good. I, one of my favorite episodes of your show is you talking to Ryder Strong

• 1:17:25Speaker 05

  about the concept of selling out. He's like, can we get a check? Why is it bad to have a job reality bites and have a check? And I was like, you are not wrong, sir. You are not wrong. So, yeah, I, I'm not gonna begrudge her her chat.

• 1:17:40Speaker 00

  It's interesting you say the male gaze thing, because I'm really interested in the Fergie and Will dynamic. Like, My Humps ostensibly is a song where Will is hitting on Fergie, but there's a really weird, like brother sister vibe to them. Like, so much of Fergie's role in this group is to be like hit on by Will, but it doesn't, it feels so weird and cuddly and wrong in like a cool way. I, am I, am I making any sense to you?

• 1:18:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know that in Blades of Glory, there's the brother sister.

• 1:18:15Speaker 00

  Yes, right. Okay.

• 1:18:17Speaker 05

  Who are a little too close that their routines are a little too friend girlfriendy. And that's kind of what it felt like, that yes, it is gross. And let's be honest, the racial dynamics of having this dark skinned black man, you know, for a living now hitting on this white girl. And the fact that, I mean, I don't know if they can get away with that now. And still be, not that they were family friendly, but still like, you know, there's still a kids bop version, not of my humps, but of some of this stuff.

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  Okay, good. Yeah.

• 1:18:48Speaker 05

  And that's a whole weird, I'd like to come back and do kids bop at some point with you.

• 1:18:51Speaker 00

  But I'd like you to do that.

• 1:18:52Speaker 05

  That whole phenomenon, the hell, the hell was that? But um, yeah, it's, she was so objectified, but yet there was, there was still a place for her humanity. Like, they still were like, and that's just Stacy. Like, that's just for her. Like, there was a good naturedness to the, the doggy dogness of it. Um, which I thought was interesting, because like I said, there was so much of that happening in that era. Um, and, and none of it was cute. There's nothing cuddly about Girls Gone Wild. There's nothing really cuddly, if you look at it, about the girls next door. It's still gross.

• 1:19:33Speaker 05

  Twin, the Twin Peaks, Hooters, tilted kilt era of restaurants, you know, it was all, that was a musical restaurant, that song. And um, it's weird.

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  Yes. I hard agree on all of that. I, yeah, wow. Um, as you mentioned, like, these are really weird people. You know, this is a really striking group of people. And like, Will and Fergie are the very obvious focal points. But I do think that Taboo and Apple D'App are important and necessary. Like, they'd been there from the beginning. And like, this needs to be like a bigger unruly gang. Like, what's your sense of the total group dynamic here?

• 1:20:18Speaker 05

  Well, you know, they're, this, I'm gonna say aesthetics, and this sounds like I'm objectifying people. But they were visually striking. I, I covered them 20 something years ago, whenever they were touring in South Florida, in Fort Lauderdale. And the, there was so much happening on the stage at once. Like, um, they're moving, and they're, they, there's, you know, braids flying, and Fergie's hair, and Will's wearing a hat, and you know, it's all, Apple D'App is doing whatever he does. And so, and because they're so, they are very racially striking, you know, as a separate

• 1:21:04Speaker 05

  group, which does remind me of the way that some, say, girl groups, it's like a S Club 7 situation. It's like, make sure there's a black girl. And then there's a dark Spice Girls, that whole kind of situation. But because there's all, there's a gender difference. And also because those three guys were organic. They were organic to the group. And so, so she adds, they were, yeah. And so she adds a different dynamic. I think that it only works, because if it's just Will and Fergie, it's this weird, twisted Captain, Captain and Tenille situation. Did you, have you read about that? That was a terrible marriage?

• 1:21:43Speaker 00

  I had a vague sense of that, but I have not done the Captain and Tenille deep dive. And I, I need to get to that. Do I need to get to that? Do I want to know? Or do you just want to?

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  No, you probably don't. I don't want to hurt your feelings. It was very hard to watch.

• 1:21:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:21:57Speaker 05

  No. Tony Tenille is God's strongest soldier, because damn, that was not a great situation. But if it's just, yeah, if it was just like Weird Peaches and Herb, um, it's just the two of them together. It's, they're always just gonna be playing off of each other's energy.

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:22:16Speaker 05

  But with the four of them, it is a group. It is, there is a dynamic that is different. Um, there's a very bad, but funny in a bit way, it should not be SNL sketch from that period.

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  That's right. Yeah.

• 1:22:32Speaker 05

  Yes. They said they were, um, Taboo was on the cover, it was Andy Samberg on the cover of Vaguely Asian Magazine. I was like, ooh.

• 1:22:42Speaker 00

  It's a different time. It wasn't that different at the time, but it was technically a different time. Right.

• 1:22:47Speaker 05

  None of this would work now. None of this would work now. Or they would have to be different. Because the, let's be honest, the crowd that now wants you to be racially insensitive is not a crowd that's going to buy this. The Morgan Hollen fans are not buying this.

• 1:23:04Speaker 00

  No, no, they are not. Wow. Okay, so this is, this is, speaking of it being a different time, Leslie, why did the Black Eyed Peas name Let's Get It Started something else at first? What were these, what were these people thinking?

• 1:23:26Speaker 05

  What were you thinking? I, I think this is the, and it's weird, because Will I Am does not seem like the kind of person that miscalculates a lot.

• 1:23:34Speaker 00

  He doesn't. That's the whole, that's his whole thing, is calculating exactly how far.

• 1:23:38Speaker 05

  It's calculating and planning. And I really think that when they were launching Big as past Where Is the Love, now we're a party band. Now we're seeing all this other stuff that's happening. And so that term, which we will not use, but that rhymes with started, is something that people would say, because there's a, there's a line in it, get stupid, which is, it's like, let's lose all control, let's get drunk, let's, you know, get unfettered, let's get on whatever. And so that has been unfortunately associated with having, um, some sort of, uh, mental, um, mental

• 1:24:21Speaker 05

  setbacks, or mental, mental disabilities, or developmentally, developmental issues. And that's a thing that I grew up, and I'm sure you grew up, hearing people were saying to people. And they didn't really mean that they had mental, it's like, it's a way of saying, God, that was stupid for you to say. I can't believe you're acting so stupid, but using that word. So, I remember hearing that song, or seeing it on that, the original, I probably had the CD, and going, they said what now? And then hearing on the radio, it's now, let's get it started. So yeah, the fact that, once again, nothing that you would ever do. No, you would never do that now. I don't think, someone, that's not true. Someone who was trying to get like a indie kind of, you

• 1:25:05Speaker 05

  know, whatever thing going, might do it. But someone like Will I Am, who was really targeting world domination and trying to be the Wyclef of his generation, the Quincy Jones, the baby face, the Uber producer, whatever, that guy was not, would not knowingly, well, not knowingly, I don't think he thought it through.

• 1:25:29Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:25:30Speaker 05

  Use that word. And the fact that it immediately went off. They were like, never mind, new word. Yeah.

• 1:25:37Speaker 00

  Remix, yeah.

• 1:25:38Speaker 05

  Remix, yes.

• 1:25:41Speaker 00

  I, Will I Am is interesting to me, because I agree, like, he's a world domination guy. I think of him as Bono. Like, he wants to be like the tech mogul, he wants to be a thought leader. He's like a walking TED Talk, right? Like, he's like a politician, you know, maybe literally eventually. Like, what do you make of him as like a public figure?

• 1:26:00Speaker 05

  Like I said, have you, have you ever watched him on The Voice UK, which just fired Tom Jones because they suck? Um, and?

• 1:26:08Speaker 00

  I have not, I'm sorry to say. That's, I'm sorry they did that to you, though. Yeah.

• 1:26:12Speaker 05

  It's terrible for Tom Jones. Um, and who's salty about it on social media, which I love. He's, he's like, not, not a good time to fire an 85 year old guy. I'm like, you tell him Tom Jones. But on that show, Will I Am is like the constant. He's the, the wise person. He's the, like, nice Simon Cowell, in terms of, he is like the anchor of the thing. And that-

• 1:26:41Speaker 05

  And he's all like, his eyes are all wide, you know, he does, he looks and he's just listening and he's just, you know, doing this whole thing. And that reminded me that this is now a different guy than let's get it, you know, than trying to be something else. He is trying to be greater than that. And you're right, to be in different parts, being philosopher, which why I mentioned Wyclef, because his whole thing was very much like, I'm a poet and a musician and maybe an actor and I'm a politician, maybe, and I'm a, you know, force for great change. And, you know, I got Bob Dylan in my video. Yeah, philanthropist,

• 1:27:24Speaker 05

  philanthropist, what are we doing? And I felt like, yeah, like, it's like Bono, that Bono, I had a very depressing conversation with my goddaughter, who was 22, 23, and her best friend is the same age, on the way back from the Maryland Renaissance Festival the other day, which was hilarious. My first time going.

• 1:27:40Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:27:41Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:27:42Speaker 05

  And it was a whole thing. And my son was there, yeah, trying to be cool, going in his hoodie. He just turned thirteen last week and he's like, can I try to crossbow?

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  Oh, man. I don't think so. I don't want to tell you how to parent, but I'm gonna say no on the crossbow.

• 1:28:02Speaker 05

  It was a little crossbow that like you shoot, you're trying, like a dart thing. He was like.

• 1:28:07Speaker 00

  Okay, sure. It was like a Nerf thing.

• 1:28:09Speaker 05

  Yes, they had an actual crossbow. And I'm like, no, it's not a thing. But anyway, so we're having an conversation and we're all picking music at the end. And somehow U2 comes up and Ellie, my goddaughter Maggie's friend, only knows them as the group that made you listen to their song.

• 1:28:29Speaker 00

  Their album on your iPod. Yeah, that's.

• 1:28:34Speaker 05

  And she has broken. And it's so sad, because she was like, I don't like U2. My friend goes, I don't like U2 either, because they're different. I don't like their music. You don't like them because of that. And because it just felt like weird and overbearing. And once again, like, Will.i.am choosing to use that word, if Bono had really had gotten out of his own butt long enough to understand that this was not going to endear you to people, forcing your music on people was not gonna work. Because he was on his way to being like, he's talking out of the conferences and he's at Davos and he's doing all this stuff.

• 1:29:09Speaker 00

  He's Steve Jobs. Right. Yeah.

• 1:29:12Speaker 05

  Yes. And he's being greater than this Irish kid, you know, singing, you know, you know, in black and white and the rain, the rain, that's boys to men. They were more like, it.

• 1:29:24Speaker 00

  They probably did that at some point. Yeah, right.

• 1:29:28Speaker 05

  But yeah, I think that Will.i.am is incredibly talented, but like I said, there is something very calculated about him that makes him, I mean, I think all producers are calculated, like, not like Babyface wakes up in the morning and goes, I'm just gonna do a thing, right? There's a planning to it. But Babyface's thing seems more like, I'm a very cool person. I'm just gonna be cool today. And Will.i.am is like.

• 1:29:51Speaker 00

  It's more organic.

• 1:29:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, there's a Dr. Evil plan of world domination with.

• 1:29:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29:59Speaker 05

  And what he had more money than I do. So, once again, I'm not gonna take a check out the brother's hand.

• 1:30:04Speaker 00

  All right. Just to wrap up, we probably should have a cursory conversation about the song, I Got a Feeling, right? Which, which came out in, which came out in 2009. And I see it often cited now as an example of Obama core, right? Like this era of time, like, super celebratory and optimistic, you know, inspired in part by the election. But like, this is also a song in the shadow of the Great Recession, right? Like, this is weirdly like, both a straightforward party song and like a complicated song about forgetting all your troubles. And right now, you have a whole lot of troubles. Like, do you see this, I Got a Feeling, as a party song or a song of like resilience in the face of hardship?

• 1:30:49Speaker 05

  I think it's both. It's kind of like, Come on, Get Happy, but to like a, a club beat, you know, it's got like a, Come on, Get Happy, which was one of those songs that was created during the Depression and stuff. It was like, there were lots of that. Have yourself a merry little Christmas, which is, A, depressing, it's a depressing song.

• 1:31:08Speaker 00

  Yes, it is.

• 1:31:09Speaker 05

  But it's also, like, it's about hope and it's all of that era. So this, absolutely, I felt that. It was at so many weddings that I went to. I went to, I was in my 30s, so I went to a lot of weddings during that time. It, so many weddings. There was, I went to, like, it was played like in the mall. It was like, if you were listening to a top 40 station, it was nonstop on the thing. And it was a song that my grandmother would have heard somewhere at some point, probably like changing the dial, it was on a compilation or something. But I think it is both, like, just like those other songs, Depression era songs I mentioned, it was engineered, and I think maybe in the most organic thing that

• 1:31:53Speaker 05

  Will.i.am ever did, that, to me, that says, you wanna, we wanna party, we wanna, you know, we're talking about, you know, you know, it's about celebration, but it's also like, it's reassuring, everything's gonna be, tonight's gonna be a good night, tonight's gonna be a good night. And which is, every, every bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah, I married into a Jewish family, always play that song. Even the one I went to in 2024, that song was on the.

• 1:32:23Speaker 00

  Still there.

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  Because to them, that's like, that's like celebration to us, you know? They played celebration, too. I think, I think my cousin made that playlist. But anyway, and not the younger cousin who's bat mitzvah it was. But yeah, that song is a really non cynical.

• 1:32:42Speaker 00

  Yes, that's true.

• 1:32:45Speaker 05

  Which is, that whole era was so bathed in cynicism and the carryover, the irony of the 90s and the, kind of like, we care but not too much. And that song cared.

• 1:33:03Speaker 00

  That song did care.

• 1:33:05Speaker 05

  Which was, which makes it a really great song.

• 1:33:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. I was gonna ask you if you've ever danced to it, and clearly you have, like, is I Got a Feeling a different song when you're dancing to it? When you're at a wedding? When you're at a bar mitzvah? Like, there's a huge difference to me between a song where you're listening to other people party and a song where you're ostensibly partying yourself? Like, how does this song feel in the moment when you are dancing to it?

• 1:33:32Speaker 05

  I have, I did not like that song until it was played at a friend's wedding. I made a mistake of saying that. And she's like, what? Like, never mind, don't worry about it. I was like, oh, I liked it. Because, sorry, but sorry, Kim. But in that moment, there was, there was an ebullience, there was a, you know, you get married, your friend is getting married and everyone is in a good mood and everybody is saying, that's what we walked into when they were introducing the wedding party, we walked into that. And it's like the declaration that tonight's gonna be a good night. So it has been decreed, it's been stated and said, it's certified now, tonight's gonna be a good night. And

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  it was a good night. And I think that when you are bopping along to it and everyone is in the same feeling, it feels different. It feels authentic. It feels good to say, particularly right now, this dumpster frickin' fire in right now, it feels, God, listen to it in preparation for this. And maybe they're lying, but maybe everything is gonna be okay. Maybe it is gonna be a good night. I don't know. Metaphorically.

• 1:34:43Speaker 00

  Totally. Leslie, this has been wonderful, as always. We're gonna have you back very soon, where you just, you're gonna talk about your experience at the Renaissance Festival for 45 minutes. I'm very interested in your thoughts, anything you ate, if you had a giant turkey leg, if you yourself shot the crossbow, I need to know everything about your Renaissance Festival experience.

• 1:35:05Speaker 05

  I got pictures. I got pictures.

• 1:35:07Speaker 00

  I would like to see the pictures. We are a video podcast now, so we have the technology to display those to everybody with your permission. Leslie, thank you so much. Wonderful to talk to you. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Leslie Gray Streeter. Thanks to our producers, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, Julianna Ress, and Olivia Creery. Animations and graphics by Chris Calliton. And special thanks to Cole Kushner, and thanks to you for listening. And now, let's all go listen to I Got a Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas. We'll see you next week.

• 1:35:44Speaker 06

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