Will.I.Am: Songs About Girls
Will.I.Am: Likes girls
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Friday, 28, Sep 2007 05:57
Interscope Records, out now.
In a nutshell
Music to get your freak on.
What's it all about?
The title is perhaps a giveaway. Will.I.Am has said that the 17 tracks on this album are confessional, relating "a story of falling in love, falling out of love, trying to get back in love, destructing love and destroying love and then starting a new situation. That journey is what makes this unique". Songs About Girls is semi-autobiographical in that the songs are mostly about one girl, with whom the artist had a seven-year-relationship that ended painfully. It is technically Will.I.Am's third solo effort, although he prefers to call his first two albums, from 2001 and 2003 respectively, 'production compilations', the self-deprecating soul.
Who's it by
Born William James Adam Junior, Will.I.Am is best known as the sartorially-savvy frontman of hip-hop super-group the Black Eyed Peas. Unlike Stacey "Fergie" Ferguson, Will.I.Am was one of the band's founding members. He and band mate apl.de.ap began rapping and performing together in their native LA back in 1988. Before they hit the big-time, the Black Eyed Peas were seen as offering a socially-conscious alternative to the gangsta rap that has dominated the hip-hop scene since the late 1980s. Where is the Love? catapulted them to fame in 2003 at a time when its pacifistic sentiment chimed with those opposed to the newly-launched war in Iraq. Their album Elephunk, the first to feature Fergie's vocals, would eventually go platinum in the US and across Europe. Since then, there have been a steady flow of chart-friendly hits from Elephunk and 2005's follow-up Monkey Business. Last year, Fergie released a solo effort and now he is doing the same, Will.I.Am has been keen to stress that the Black Eyed Peas are still very much an outfit.
As an example
"I just can't get over/The simple little fact that the love is over/I thought me and you was gonna get older/And then go and have a baby and mould her." - Over
"We could make it work/We just can't throw love down in the dirt/You probably thinking I'm a f*****g jerk/Cos the way I let you down, it made you hurt/I didn't mean to make you hurt."
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
The Black Eyed Peas already have two Grammy awards and a cluster of nominations to their name so recognition for their main man is probable. Though Fergie's solo efforts were not rewarded by the music industry's Oscars, she has garnered a host of prizes from the likes of MTV and her band mate will hope for the same.
What the others say
"It's easy to forget that beneath the cotton-candy hip-hop of the Black Eyed Peas lies one of the most meticulous minds in the production game. Will's third solo album is devoted to women, but he stretches the conceit in imaginative directions." - Rolling Stone
"Does it still count as a solo career if your song sounds exactly like the sort of song you would put out with your day job band, and contains a guest appearance from the singer in your day job band, and it's basically one of your day job band's biggest hits, only done worse, and in an (even) more remedial, drooling.?" - the BBC's chart blog
So is it any good?
Songs About Girls is pure musical catharsis. Will.I.Am crystallises his frustration in funk with songs that, despite the occasional suspect lyric, convincingly articulate the mixture of sadomasochistic rumination, bitter regret and remembered joy attending any messy break-up.
The album opens with the sensational Over, a paean to thwarted love set to a sexy beat that compels you to move your feet. Second track Heartbreaker features some lovely guitar work from Josh Lopez, at which point it is worth noting that as well as writing, producing and of course rapping, Will.I.Am also plays several instruments.
One More Chance is just as lyrically astute, as is album highlight She's A Star - a wonderfully tender document of dazzled love.
First single I Got it From My Mama is insanely catchy, a one-dimensional fun-fest that sounds like the Black Eyed Peas, perhaps unsurprisingly given that it features Fergie's vocals.
The low point is undoubtedly The Donque Song featuring Snoop Dogg. Quite what a 'donque' is, I'm not sure, but it's clearly rather rude. The big-name guest appearance might win Will.I.Am some attention but not, I'd wager, of the right kind. Snoop steps up the misogyny on a track that is as objectifying as My Humps, but less infectious. Will.I.Am also takes an ill-judged bite out of mainstream rap in Get Your Money. He just about saves it though by using the phrase 'drop-dead intelligent' where a lesser peer would have managed to smuggle in the word 'ho'.
SOS (Mother Nature) harks back to the social consciousness that saw Black Eyed Peas' first album rejected as unmarketable. This brilliant lament about global warming has razor-sharp lyrics which attack government hypocrisy and corporate corruption but also acknowledge the public's complicity: "They don't really care for us, and we can't complain 'cos the only one to blame is us."
The Black Eyed Peas are manifestly more than the sum of their parts, which is a band whose huge popularity is predicated on a sense that they are straining against the mainstream. This tension can work well for them. Elsewhere they opt for the lowest common denominator, as with the semantically drained, pornstar anthem My Humps.
Will.I.Am seems to be similarly torn. And judging by She's A Star and SOS (Mother Nature), he should stay earnest and engaged and send artistically lazy Snoop Dogg back to his kennel.
7/10
Meghan Graham