LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 05: apl.de.ap, Taboo and will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas attend the Nordoff Robbins O2 Silver Clef Awards 2019 at the Grosvenor House on July 05, 2019 in London, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)
No one will deny that the Black Eyed Peas had hits but it apparently hits home for the group’s founder Will.i.am that the group is counted out in spaces that mean the most to him.
Will.i.am spoke with his good friend #WyclefJean on “Run That Back” to talk about the Black Eyed Peas and how he feels disappointed with them not being celebrated as a Black group despite the fact they had reached huge levels of success, according to Hot New Hip Hop.
“In 2004, Black Eyed Peas we, we were just trying to get on. When you think of—like, I’m a Black dude but when you think of Black Eyed Peas, we got so big that…and it hurts, it still hurts a little bit that we’re not considered a Black group because we got that big,” Will.i.am said.
He continued, “And when you think of Black Eyed Peas, you don’t think of—it’s no longer urban or Black culture, which is…it’s not good for the black community that Black Eyed Peas is not looked at as a Black group because we had international success.”
Will.i.am said the group’s international success should be “credited to the Black community more so than letting it be adopted.” He went on to list various genres that Black people once dominated but now have little presence, such as jazz.
“That’s just a thing that we suffer from all the time. When you think of Jazz, you no longer think of Black anymore. When you think of Rock n’ Roll, you don’t think of Black anymore. All that, I don’t know why we have that. When you think of even country, you don’t think of Black. A lot of the things that we create and we invent, we dispose of or it gets stolen from us to the point where it’s not associated to its origins,” he said.
Is he speaking facts or nah? Let us know.
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