BEP & Me

Remember when you found out I was blogging again? (No? It was yesterday! Check your Facebook.) Your first question was "Has time tempered him? Age wizened him? Love softened him?" (I know: three questions. See yesterday re: your birthright.) You naturally wondered if the acerbic wit that almost brought a smile to your face on maybe a couple of occasions would continue to provoke near reactions in you from time to time. (Sorry, I read your diary.)
Fear not. The same impotent rage that drove me in October fuels me today. Especially today, when I saw this:

Oh good.
If what was missing from your life was the mind-blowing talent of The Black Eyed Peas without the (Sesame) street charisma of Will.i.am or the transgendered charm of Fergie, well buddy, your life is now complete.
I could never express the inanity and atrocity that is the Black Eyes Peas as well as this article, so instead I will share with you my own personal experience of them, which is kind of like being liberated after 15 years in anonymous captivity only to find out the first chick you did it with once you were freed was your own daughter, so you cut out your tongue just to never have to speak of it again.
Sometime prior to the turn of the millennium, my band 2 Skinnee J's had the honor of playing at Red Rocks in Colorado. An outdoor venue nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains perhaps most famous for the setting of the U2 concert/album/film Under a Blood Red Sky, it really is a magical place. We were psyched to play there and it was fun to watch the other bands. It was a reggae festival, so who knows why the fuck we were on the bill, but good vibes bro. One band that played after us was another live hip hop band, a multi-culti collection of skaters and backpackers fronted by three MCs (sans trannie) called the Black Eyed Peas. They had had a song on a soundtrack that sounded a little like A Tribe Called Quest lite, and I was curious to see their show.
They fucking rocked. For realz. The band was tight while the rappers worked the crowd like a three-headed break-dancing hydra. It was truly awesome.
To put this in a greater context let me give you a little history lesson rant like an grumpy senior citizen explain: artistically, it sucked being in a live rap band in the late 90s. A decade earlier, hip hop had been the most exciting music around. Rock was still a couple of years away from shedding the spandex and eyeliner, and electronic music was, well, electronic music. I vividly remember the first time I heard Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions and De La Soul. It isn't an exaggeration to say those bands changed my life. A few years later I was living in Brooklyn, rapping with a bunch of guys who, like me, had fallen in love with the art form after growing up on the new wave, punk and rock of the 80's. In our minds, we were fusing the music of our youth into an exciting blend of beat-based, hooky awesomeness. It turns out, in everybody else's, we were like Limp Bizkit, but pussies. Nu metal had come along and shit the bed for any band that wanted to rap and play guitar, and everybody was getting stained by the mess.
This made it extra exciting to be part of any gig that showed us in the same light we saw ourselves. The Roots, Cibo Matto, Native Tongues: these were the bills we were amped to play. The fact that we did get to play them was satisfying on many levels. And that day near Denver, the Black Eyed Peas were a part of that.
They then went on to become simultaneously the worst and the biggest band in the world, celebrating the same kind of idiocy, if not the aggression, that we so dutifully spent the 90s disdaining.
The poo cherry on the puke sundae was when I discovered a couple of years ago that a friend of mine, one of my favorite artists from those days who we played with a lot, had become a producer of theirs. (And other equally terrible music) It was like finding out your favorite uncle has been bombing abortion clinics.
So fuck Taboo spinning whatever David Guetta b-sides he sees fit for drunk Scandinavians next week at Sutton. One Black Eyed Pea is still too many Black Eyes Peas.