Will.i.am (6 page)

Despite these widespread and glowing reports from the critics, the album did not trouble the upper reaches of any mainstream charts, reaching no higher than number 129 in the
Billboard
charts. Likewise, their first three singles were, commercially speaking, flops. Will could later reflect on
the irony in the fact that, as the band’s commercial fortunes
soared with future works, their stock among most of the critics would correspondingly plunge. However, for now, he was terribly disappointed by their performance. ‘We haven’t even gone
gold, this is not a good look,’ he said. Iovine told them to be patient and keep their belief. Will heeded these words but nothing could dispel his displeasure and bewilderment. Of all the
band, he probably took the news hardest. After all, Will had never been of the mind that success equalled a compromise of one’s principles. ‘If we sell well, that’s cool because
we’re doing something good,’ he told the
Fredricksburg Free-Lance Star
. ‘We can’t sell out if we’re doing something we enjoy. I think people miss the meaning
of what selling out means.’

Meanwhile, in the run-up to the album’s release, the band had continued to be busy on the live circuit, building awareness through more live performances. The evenings
also served as introductions to a galaxy of future stars, including Eminem, Macy Gray – and Stacy Ferguson, aka Fergie.

As they adjusted to life as a fully signed band, they also shot their first official promotional video. It was a day of some excitement when the video, shot in various Los
Angeles locations, was first aired on television. The band were strolling deeper and deeper into mainstream music and enjoying every moment. It was almost like a rebirth: as Taboo put
it, they were like ‘ninjas pushing up street drain covers and rising into the big, wide world’.

As ninja Will stretched his limbs and regarded the big, wide world in front of him, he saw a planet replete with opportunity. Throughout his life Will has rarely missed a chance to grab an
opportunity. For instance, when the Black Eyed Peas were invited on the Smokin’ Grooves tour – a mobile music festival featuring several of hip-hop’s biggest acts – he
eschewed much of the inevitable partying that took place between performances. Instead, he networked relentlessly. The tour was peopled by countless performers who he felt could improve his
band’s career, starting with their next album. He took as many telephone numbers as he could from the movers and shakers.

During performances from other acts, he used his relative anonymity to eavesdrop on the feedback from audience members, stealthily mingling with the masses and noting down what they liked and
disliked. This tendency of Will’s helped to earn his band a nickname on the tour – the Good Samaritans. Another factor in the moniker was that the band rarely indulged in any sexual
shenanigans with the plentiful beautiful females around the tour. In
truth, this was less about abstinence and more due to the fact that, as the least famous act on a bill so
prestigious it included Public Enemy, Busta Rhymes, Wyclef Jean and many others, the Black Eyed Peas members had to concede that they were far down the pecking order when it came to groupies and
other beauties.

Will mostly enjoyed the touring experience, though he found the proximity to so many other artists a touch wearing after a while. Band vocalist at the time, Kim Hill, had a dog called Chompa,
who was not a creature that Will felt any love towards, regularly shoving it off the seats on the tour bus and also occasionally growling at it, in the hope of intimidating the dog out of his
personal sphere. He also had a bizarre and ultimately frustrating conversation with Public Enemy’s ostentatious star Flavor Flav. Will wanted to have a deep conversation with Flav about
astrology. He got a hint of the scale of the challenge ahead when, on enquiring which star sign Flav was, he received the reply: ‘I am a
tarantula
...’

A more personally rewarding experience came on the day that Will first saw one of his songs used in a film. The movie
Bulworth
had included ‘Joints & Jam’ in its
soundtrack. The film turned out to be a forgettable and not overly successful affair. That meant little, though, as Will sat in a cinema and watched the film, his mouth spreading into a wide grin
as
his song came out of the big speakers. His American dream was slowly coming true.

Later, the band was invited to take part on another multi-band tour, but this time it was on a bill dominated not by hip-hop and soul artists, but
punk
acts. The Black Eyed Peas were an
improbable fit for the Vans Warped Tour, but they agreed to join. Sure enough, it took them a while to win over audiences. At one show they were racially abused by some skinheads in the crowd. The
angry skinheads called the band ‘niggers’, and told them they should ‘go back to Africa’. Elsewhere on the tour, bottles were thrown and obscene hand gestures were offered
by many audience members. However, the band stuck to their guns and often managed to win audiences over by the end of their set. It was often their song ‘Head Bobs’ that began to turn
the mood. By the time they left the stage each night, they would have won some of the fans over, but as often as not it had been a tough experience. With the tour complete, the band’s stature
in America had grown. Now, it was time for them to fly further afield to promote their music.

Will’s love affair with London, and with England in general, was about to blossom.

E
ver since the band name-checked London during their early song ‘Joints & Jam’, it had seemed inevitable that they would enjoy life
in the English capital. So, when they arrived in the country in September 1998, they were full of excitement. They did all the cheesy tourist things, visiting landmarks and museums, and whooping
with excitement as they saw the red telephone boxes, British policemen and so on. They took walks in Regent’s Park, a stunning experience as autumn was just setting in, with all the beauty
that entails.

They played two nights at Camden Town’s famous Jazz Café and were thrilled by the acclaim they received from the audiences in the crowded venue on Parkway, one of the
district’s hippest streets. London was proving to be a special place for them. Apl even commented that he felt like ‘one of the fucking Beatles out there’. With UK radio stations
playing their music, crowds cheering them in Camden, and the band’s merchandising arm doing a healthy trade, London felt very much like a second home to Will. It was in
the English capital that he rebuilt his confidence, following the disappointment of the debut album.

Back home in LA, they began work on the follow-up album in the autumn of 1999. With Will at the centre of everything, the band spent four months recording the album that would be called
Bridging the Gap
. Most of the work took place at Paramount Studios, with around fifty songs they had written, mostly on the road, since they had wrapped work on their debut. During the
recording, the evidence of Will’s successful networking on the road was clear for all to see. A succession of big-name artists collaborated, some of them longer-term friends or contacts of
Will, but many of them names he had signed up during the Smokin’ Grooves tour.

Among the names to collaborate were De La Soul, Wyclef Jean, Macy Gray, Mos Def and DJ Premier. The last also worked on the production of the overall album. Some of the
‘collaborations’ were actually performed remotely, with the external act sending their contribution electronically to the main studio. However, Will did work in shoulder-to-shoulder
proximity to DJ Premier. The day he and his bandmates stepped into his legendary D&D Studios in
Manhattan was a proud and electrifying one for all the visitors. As far as
they were concerned, they were standing in one of music’s most hallowed environments, alongside their genre’s finest producer.

Not everyone they approached to be involved with the album consented. For instance, Paul McCartney refused to allow them to sample the Beatles track, ‘Baby You’re a Rich Man’.
While some critics would snipe that, in signing up De La Soul and other acts as collaborators, the Black Eyed Peas were merely trying to hang on to the coattails of bigger names, the variety of
sounds and rich influences that came with them was what mattered to most listeners to the final product. Once the band had selected the final cut of tracks for the album, it was ready for release
in the autumn of 2000.

Technology and fate, though, would intervene in the run-up to the September release, when several tracks from the album were leaked online. While at the time this was a frustrating development
for the band, and an almost devastating one in terms of sales, it would prompt Will, in particular, to grasp the opportunities that the internet and other technological developments offered.

The rude awakening began when, several months ahead of the album’s release, Will suddenly heard some of the tracks being played by a DJ at a party. Around the same time, Will’s
friend Dante Santiago also heard a track being
played – at a shoe store in downtown Los Angeles. When the band investigated how this could have happened, they were pointed
towards the online music-sharing site, Napster. There, they found that the entire album had been leaked and was being shared for free by members. At this stage, the sharing of music online was in
its infancy. Many acts were finding themselves caught out in this way.

A crisis meeting was called at the band’s headquarters in Los Angeles. They huddled round a conference-call telephone connected to the record-label management. In his book, Taboo noted
that Will was the most shaken up by the development. ‘[He] was really bent out of shape because we were not in control of our music, and he, more than any of us, hates being out of
control.’ The band’s suspicion that they were, for now at least, essentially powerless in the face of the Napster phenomenon, hit them hard. Will, though, became consumed by an urge to
grasp all the opportunities that were available in the blossoming world of technology. Within years, he would be on top of the world of the internet. By the time he became a judge on the UK
television show
The Voice
, he would be so synonymous with the internet that his tweeting would become a topic of national debate.

More immediately, though, the actual release of
Bridging the Gap
became surrounded by disappointment. When work on the album had been completed, Will was convinced
they had something very special on their hands. There would be no grand unveiling, though, merely a commercial confirmation of a release that had already taken place. Far from
exceeding the disappointing sales of
Behind the Front, Bridging the Gap
actually sold less. Still, the album received a glowing tribute from
Rolling Stone
’s reviewer, who
commented that whereas
Behind the Front
‘was a little too slickly produced’,
Bridging the Gap
is ‘a more organic-feeling representation of their considerable
skills and vision. Uncluttered but muscular production, deft samples and smart rhymes all ensure that the album’s power increases with repeated listenings.’

Furthermore,
Bridging
reached higher in the charts than its predecessor, peaking at number sixty-seven in America. That could not lift the mood, though, as the album sold only 250,000
copies initially. Given that it had been downloaded illegally nearly four million times, one can see the impact that the Napster leak had on the album’s commercial performance. True, not all
of those downloaders would have paid money for the album had that been the only way of obtaining it, but a significant proportion surely would have.

Vocalist Kim Hill, though, believes the low sales figures were unrelated to the leak. ‘I doubt, very strongly, that the record sales were jeopardized by Napster,’ she said. She
added that the problem was the band’s image: ‘Three boys with sneakers and argyle socks, and a girl that actually had clothes on’. Whatever the case, the
Napster leak had shaken Will. In the future, iTunes and other legitimate websites would make online music purchasing a less ‘wild west’ affair, but that was no comfort at the time. To
make matters worse, this would not be the last that Will and his band would hear from online leakage.

Will, who had dreamed of such success and worked so hard with clear ambitions in mind, was not complaining about the sudden upturn in their fortunes. While celebrating their
success, he set to work thinking about how to build on it in the future. Part of that future would be further forays into solo territory. He had released his first full-length solo album,
Lost
Change
, in November 2001. Due to various factors, including the 11 September attacks and – as we shall see – the rising focus on the Black Eyed Peas, the album failed to make a
huge impact on the public psyche. Instead, it rather got lost, and many admirers of Will’s music were not at first even aware of its existence. However, it makes for a rich and enjoyable
experience that, with the benefit of hindsight, gave signposts to Will’s future.

In one of the few reviews, the website AllMusic described it as: ‘A sophisticated and musically enthralling endeavour that still manages to be accessible’,
concluding that ‘
Lost Chang
e does an admirable job of implementing a host of different styles, without losing the listener in the process.’

In contrast to his hugely commercial approach to Black Eyed Peas releases, Will was genuinely unfazed by the poor sales of his solo debut. ‘It wasn’t really supposed to [sell a
lot],’ he told
Rime
magazine. Instead, he added, he wanted it to make an impact on a handful of influential music industry figures. ‘The only people I really cared about
listening to it and liking it was the Okayplayer community and the Breakestra community. That’s not really a lotta people – it’s just tastemakers, people that care about music
integrity. That’s pretty much all I cared about. I got the video played on MTV – shot the video, paid for it myself, and I took it to MTV’s offices and they added it. That was
kinda surprising cuz it wasn’t like it was [selling] mad units, and there were a whole bunch of other groups that they weren’t playing.’ Billing it as a ‘soundtrack’,
Will was pleased with the outcome of his debut solo venture.