will.i.a.m. Sucks

Posted at 12:00 PM Jan 20, 2009

By Kenny Herzog



At one point did Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am become hip-hop's voice of political conscience and Native Tongue depth? Has the genre become so polarized by self-involved pseudo-artistes like Kanye and unabashed eccentric braggarts like Lil Wayne that there's no middle-ground representative with enough commercial appeal and grounded perspective to suddenly soundtrack the historical moment of Barack Obama's ascendency to President?

Just to review, the constantly sunglasses-adorned MC spent the late '90s and early 2000s as main mouthpiece for the Peas, known more conversationally as the poor man's Tribe Called Quest/De La Soul/et al. Then, like a sitcom struggling to stay afloat, they added a new character, in the form of big-bootied crystal-meth addict Fergie, who provided will.i.am with new leverage and credibility as a producer and solo artist, which resulted in shit-tastic affairs like Songs About Girls, which turned out to be as surface and vapid as its potentially ironic title indicated.



But more egregiously, it allowed him to sneak through a voiceless vacuum in hip-hop and write the gnawing Obama anthem "Yes We Can," which became a YouTube phenomenon primarily because it sparked a game of "name that celebrity" akin to listening to a Girl Talk pastiche of current pop tracks.

And then suddenly we began to see will.i.am doing his best impersonation of a soulful, intellectual artist, dropping freestyle rhymes on paid-for end-of-show MTV bumpers and HBO's We Are One: Obama special that were as pedestrian as Check Your Head-era Beastie Boys lyrics, but without the slacker charm and knowing simplicity.

So perhaps the worst thing that can be said about will.i.am's inexplicable anointment as hip-hop's current poet laureate and voice of the people is that Wyclef suddenly looks like a thoguthful and mult-purposed musician by comparison. Now that, my friends, is a marker that someone sucks.

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