FEATURE

from BLACK EYED PEAS, Los Angeles, December 2022 / January 2023

HAUTE TRAVEL

he Black Eyed Peas have many things in common, but their tightest T common thread is that they’re all LA boys: both will.i.am and Taboo were born in the City of Angels. Apl.de.Ap was born in a different Angeles —Angeles

City, Philippines — but moved to LA at 14 after being adopted through the

Pearl S. Buck Foundation, an organization that finds healthier living environments for children. And so Allan Pineda Lindo (Apl) met William

Adams (otherwise known as will.i.am) while performing around LA, and they formed a few groups together. One of these groups was eventually joined by Jaime Luis Gomez (Taboo) and Kim Hill, who was replaced by

Fergie in 2002. J. Rey Soul came on board in 2018 a year after Fergie announced her departure. Over the past 25 years, the group has earned six Grammy Awards and achieved sales of 35 million albums and 120 million singles. The Peas also emerged as the second bestselling artist/group of all time for downloaded tracks, according to Nielsen. Such tracks include “Where Is the Love?,” “Boom

Boom Pow,” “Let’s Get It Started,” and “I Gotta Feeling.” They have also landed on Billboard’s Hot 100 Artists of the Decade, have performed at the

Super Bowl and the FIFA World Cup, and have collaborated with artists such as J Balvin, Maluma, Tyga, and Becky G. And while there have been many, many highs, there have been many lows too — Taboo’s 2014 bout with cancer,

Fergie’s stage-left exit, and an eight-year overall hiatus from making music. But the band is the sum of its parts, all of which have led them here to this moment, to this soundproofed room at will.i.am’s studios, talking about the past, the present, and the future. And while we’ve gone over all three, what I’m most interested in is the present. Today, in the here and now, while the guys are outwardly promoting an album of positivity, are they personally happy? The answer: a resounding yes. “I’m happier than I’ve been in the last two years,” Taboo admits. “I think regrouping with my group, my brothers, but also, just everything on the personal tip has been aligned. I think the growth within us as creatives — bringing new energy, new exciting ideas beyond just music, thinking of future creative ways to express ourselves — whether it’s a Black Eyed Peas docuseries or things that we have been talking about that are exciting, that start off with the music component, but also evolve into different things — is incredible.” Apl adds, “I’m very thankful and happy to be able to do what we love, which is making music. Especially going through all these difficulties with the world, with the pandemic, and to be able to go out there and actually see the material materialize — seeing the crowd, performing in front of the crowd, seeing them sing the songs with us... that’s everything.” For his part, will.i.am says that he is “grateful for the opportunities to continue to make music and for the audience to listen to the music. I’m grateful that, at our prime, we were number one in Mexico for many weeks, as well as in France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, and even here in the States. But mostly, I’m grateful for our career thus far, and to still have vibrancy is super important and makes me super proud.” Taboo, too, is grateful, but for an entirely different reason. I’m asking the guys about what they consider to be the greatest luxury in life, and he endearingly raises his hand. “Can I go first?” he asks. In this moment, though he is in his late 40s, he looks like a teenager in high school, vulnerable and innocent. I nod, and he says, “For me, personally, I would say my health. I battled cancer in 2014, and it was deep, it was dark, but fortunately, I’m still here. I would say that the trauma of that experience always stays with me. In those moments, I’m thinking, I appreciate my health. I’m not 100 percent healthy now, but I know that I’m better. Every day, I wake up and say, ‘I’m grateful.’ Every day that I go into my daughter Jett’s room, every time she says, ‘Good morning, dad,’ and gives me a hug, I’m grateful. I had her after being told we couldn’t have any more children, so she’s kind of like a miracle baby. Every time I see Jett’s face light up, that lights me up.” This time, it is will.i.am who agrees with Taboo — health comes first. He is lucky to be able to give back through his East LA-based nonprofit, the i.am Angel Foundation, and, health aside, he is lucky for “the ability to have an idea and materialize it. Because I don’t want to be only in my head and frustrated and bitter that I wasn’t able to materialize and see it and hold it and feel it, smell it and see other people see it,” he explains.

For Apl, this is an easy question. “The luxury for me would be to be able to put all of my nieces and nephews through school, through college. We all didn’t have that growing up. So for them to have that opportunity and to be able to achieve an education, that makes me happy.”

All three also can agree that having one another is a luxury. No matter what happens professionally, the Black Eyed Peas are brothers. They finish one another’s sentences. Taboo and Apl smile gently and patiently when will.i.am disappears during the shoot. (He resurfaces later, explaining that he had to take a business call.) You don’t sweat the small stuff after 30 years of friendship.

As I prepare to wrap up and they prepare to get it started (the shoot, I mean), all the guys have a few last words, and the topic once again turns to career longevity.

Says will.i.am, “No matter how tough it gets, I just want to remind people to stay imaginative, creative and collective, to work together in teams and to appreciate one another, because the world is about to get bumpy. This is a place we’ve never been in before, where cars will replace so many delivery jobs and cab jobs, and where job displacement is right around the corner. A lot of stuff is going to be turned inside out, which is the reason why I wanted to go back to school. I was thinking, like, When am I ever going to have an opportunity to do that? Nah, it can’t be next summer because next summer I will be traveling and touring. So if I could start making time to prepare myself, so that I know what’s coming, how, how am I going to prepare myself for it? How do I spend smarter? How do I invest smarter? How do I organize smarter? How do I discipline myself smarter? I don’t want to rely on somebody else’s smarts. I want to go out and absorb and sponge up knowledge. I’m 47 years old. I’m not getting any younger, and at this point in time, in any group, there’s that period where they either climb that mountain and they become the group that can last for another 10, 15, 20 years or they don’t. But in another 20 years, I’ll be almost 70.”

Taboo has two words: “Lionel Richie.”

Will.i.am nods. His hero. “Lionel Richie. You’ve got to look at it like that. I mean, we know what 20 years ago looked like. Twenty years ago, we just got finished with the No Doubt tour. Twenty years ago, we were about to write ‘Where Is the Love?’ Here we are now, but how do we get over that hump? Very rarely do urban groups get over that hump, where they’re still current on Top 40 radio. Earth, Wind & Fire did it. Lionel Richie did it to the max. He’s still doing it. And I want to freaking figure that out, because I know me. I’ll dwell too much if we don’t. I’ll be like, I want to be better. Damn it, I fucking knew it back then — I should have done this, I should have done that. I don’t want to be that guy, so I’m going to get some fucking strategy!”

Apl, however, is more focused on the present and making Elevation a success. “I just hope people enjoy this new body of work. We put a lot of love into it. We were trapped for so long that now, we just want to fly.”

And for Taboo, that topic brings it back to the people in this room (minus said illustrious interviewer, that is. No disrespect!). “I just want people to know that the driving force behind Black Eyed Peas has always been our friendship, our brotherhood. That is a testament to exactly what Will was saying about, groups staying together. But we’re more than a group. We’re brothers. And so for us, we’ve always sustained outside of the music business. We have a love for one another that’s very natural, and it’s embedded in our hearts because we’ve been through so much together. I think that, no matter if we get to a certain age and we can’t tour how we used to, we’ll always be connected somehow creatively, and as a family.”

“With optimism, happiness, and hope?” I ask.

“Always,” Taboo answers. “We lead with love.”

“Where is the love?” they have asked in the past. And now there is no question — and they have had the answer all along.

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