by Danny White
Will also changed his stage name to the one the whole world knows him by now. He told The New York Times how he came up with his own new moniker. ‘I liked playing with words,’ he said. ‘I noticed that my name was a sentence, meaning one with will, who is strong-willed. And so I called my mom and said, “Hey, Mom, do you mind if I call myself will.i.am?” She was like: “Whaaa? You’re crazy.” She was cool with it.’
The future looked bright, yet the present was glowing rather nicely as it was: something good was coming together. Both a sound and an image were being developed that matched what Will wanted. However, his ambition was broad and his bar set high. Will wanted his band to be innovators. As an example of the level of innovation he wished them to achieve, he looked to no lesser a musical icon than Michael Jackson. As well as Jacko’s music itself, it was the number of ‘firsts’ in pop that Jackson had achieved that appealed to Will and his band. They wanted a place in both the history books and in the wider, less tangible history of broken moulds and new paths ploughed. If only Will could have known then that he would not only meet and work with Jackson one day, but that Jackson would state that he so valued Will precisely for his ‘wonderful, innovative, positive and infectious’ nature.
Prince was another artist that they looked to as an example of the scale of success and influence they wished to achieve. Their multicultural image was in tune with his, too. Will, apl and Taboo hoped that the narratives of their own lives would serve as part of their positive, bridge-building image. One of their first songs, called ‘Joints & Jam’, spoke of ‘mass appeal’ with ‘no segregation’. It was a very ‘Will’ perspective on life.
One of the band’s first performances as the Black Eyed Peas came at the Hollywood nightclub Grand Slam. Owned by the singer Prince, the venue had considerable symbolism and stature. Will invited Taboo to join the band ahead of the date, which he gleefully accepted. Will was so excited as he and his band arrived at the venue for their first performance, which was part of a Ruthless Records showcase evening. They pulled up outside in Will’s red VW Golf, having continued their rehearsals even in the car as they drove through Los Angeles. Will told his bandmates not to be nervous. ‘Just do your thing,’ he told them.
Even his cool, though, was tested when the band began their set in front of the 150-strong audience. As he began to rap, someone in the audience threw an ice cube, which hit him directly in the eye – a shocking and painful experience. Rather than storm off the stage or lose his poise, though, Will turned the incident into a virtue by performing an impromptu rap about what had just happened. ‘Fuck this shit – this MC just got hit,’ he rhymed. As the audience’s giggles turned to admiration, he added: ‘But y’all can’t stop my shine.’
Even as the pain in his eye worsened, Will concentrated on continuing to shine. It was a tough audience, full of ‘expressionless faces’, recalled Taboo, but Will soon had them enraptured. For any band line-up, let alone one performing for the first time, the legendary ‘tough audience’ is always a challenge. In his autobiography, Taboo recalled that the audience was ‘a mean-mugging bunch of thug-like cats’. They looked the type who were more into gangsta rap-style lyrics rather than the upbeat sentiments of Will’s band.
What visual spectacle were the audience confronted with? Will and apl were both wearing vintage, old-school outfits on the night. Each had long dreadlocks, too. Taboo was dressed, in his own telling, ‘ninja style’. As Will continued to make a virtue of being struck by the ice, the audience got more and more onside with the band and the energy in the venue became positive. Backstage after the show, the band felt an increased bond between each other. They felt like they had become more than a band – it felt more like familial bond.
One of their next concerts was an open-air affair, at the Peace & Justice Center in LA. They found that the best way to test the material they were developing was in front of a live audience. Often, including at this particular concert, they would find that something that seemed a great idea when developed and performed in the garage, proved to be less of a good idea when rocked out in front of a live audience. This learning curve was a welcome development. Will in particular proved an attentive and accurate reader of an audience’s mood. Even as he and his band became so enormously popular and successful in the years to come, to an extent Will continued to use audiences as ‘focus groups’. For him, there is no point at which one stops seeking feedback in order to up your game. Even small concerts in the band’s early days – they once played to just twenty-five people at the Florentine Gardens in Hollywood – were opportunities to test what they had been working on. In fact, he found that smaller audiences sometimes made this process easier.
There were still challenges: at their first performance in New York, Will felt that many of the audience actively ‘tried’ to not understand the band. He suspected that many of the audience members were MCs themselves, and as such were taking more convincing. ‘If people are talking about you, you gotta live up to the hype,’ he said. It was a challenge he was prepared to meet.
Will’s songwriting technique began to follow a pattern from the earliest days of the band. He would find himself suddenly struck with inspiration to create a basic beat. He would quickly begin to play that beat, until a wider rhythm was born. Then the lyrics would begin to join the process. From there on, his bandmates would join in the process. These were energetic and creative sessions. The unwritten rule was that no suggestion would be mocked. As they flung ideas around, some would stick and others would not – but all were welcomed. Before they knew it, another catchy song had been created. The speed at which Will, in particular, worked was often ferocious. While his two fellow members would be writing down on paper the ideas they were working on, Will never did so. As Taboo observed, this was largely because Will’s creative mind worked so fast that he would not have been able to move his pen fast enough to commit his thoughts to paper.
Slowly but surely, the band was moving up in the world. Having worked at first in a studio based in a bedroom, they moved to their first studio proper, which was based at the Loyola Marymount University, near LAX Airport. It was a thrilling moment when they first entered the studio and saw all the equipment. To Will, the hundreds of buttons and other gadgets were opportunities. For months they worked hard in the studio, generally arriving in the evening and recording until the early hours of the following morning.
Dozens of songs emerged from these sessions, including ‘Fallin’ Up’. The creation of this song is instructive of Will’s role in the band. Apl dreamed up the chorus of the song as the band travelled by bus to a meeting. He ‘freestyled’ and soon more lyrics were coming to life. Later, in the studio, apl recited the lyrics to Will, also explaining the overall concept. ‘Yo, that shit is dope!’ Will said, and began to assemble everything needed to turn it into a proper song. He chose a Brazilian guitar riff to rework into the backing track. Full of excitement and oozing inspiration, he turned it into a fully fledged track. (Taboo would borrow the song’s title for his autobiography, too.)
They proved to be enthusiastic and effective networkers. They were always on the lookout for fresh contacts in the industry. To befriend people, they found that Will was their trump card. Not only was he naturally gregarious, but also the intense stare of his eyes and his positive, creative energy, rarely failed to win people over. People would become caught up in his ambition and enthusiasm. Even those who at this stage were far more accomplished and connected than Will did not feel they could ignore him. He gave every impression of someone who was going to go far.
The next big milestone for Will to pass was signing the band to a record label – a time at which fresh bands sometimes set in stone terms that they later regret. It is a rare pop band that is anything other than keen, desperate even, for a record contract. Labels, keenly aware of that desperation, can masterfully manipulate aspiring artists into restrictive and unfair terms that are difficult to get out of. Prince, for instance, once infamously described h
imself as a ‘slave’ to his label. Sharp, cool and wise – and with his relationship with Ruthless Records a less than ideal arrangement in the long-term – Will was determined to not let his band be bullied or rushed into a deal they would later become unhappy with.
There was no shortage of takers: in 1997, several record labels had begun to hear of this new energetic and innovative band. Three in particular were taking an interest in them – Warner Bros., Sony 550 and Interscope. A showcase performance was arranged so the band could perform in front of interested label executives. It took place at the Dragonfly nightclub, on Santa Monica Boulevard in the heart of Los Angeles, the site of many such evenings in those days. The whole band knew that a great deal was at stake on the evening; however, they also believed that they deserved to succeed, and were, therefore, brimful of confidence. Will, as ever, was the central generator of this confident mood.
On stage their confidence was vindicated: they delivered a tight and attention-grabbing performance, on the strength of which each of the three labels invited the band to their offices for discussions. Will’s masterplan had paid off. He explained that plan many years later, during an interview with the Financial Times. In short, it involved playing lots of concerts at colleges. ‘Our theory was: let’s own California,’ he said. ‘Let’s play Berkeley, let’s play Stanford, let’s play UCLA, let’s play USC. Let’s play all the colleges so every single college kid knows us and let’s create that buzz. And then we got a [record] deal.’
During those meetings, it was Will’s caution and self-belief that dictated the energy. Although he and the rest of the band had dreamed for as long as they could remember of getting a full-on record contract, and although as a unit they had worked hard for over two years to get one, he was resolute that he would not shake hands on anything but the right deal. They drove to the meetings in Will’s trusty VW Golf, and entered each meeting room emitting as much confidence as they could muster.
Their first meeting was with Warner Bros., and though the executive they met spoke a good game over how big his label could make the band, each band member had their doubts that he would deliver the sort of experience they were after. The next meeting, with Sony 550, did tempt them. The label was a division of Epic Records, which, as the band knew only too well, was the home of their hero, Michael Jackson. It was also the label for Des’ree and Celine Dion among many others. They listened very carefully to what the representative told them, the label’s existing roster of stars meant it started with obvious advantages. The Sony executive offered them very tempting terms and promised, specifically, that she would arrange for them to appear on Oprah Winfrey’s television show. It was a meeting that gave them plenty to think about … but it would be the third and final meeting of the week that landed the contract.
Interscope impressed the band from the moment they pulled up outside its large, grand offices. They took in the framed portraits of the label’s impressive roster of musicians, and sat down opposite Jimmy Iovine. His pitch to them was a winner, stating that, yes, he would make them lots of money, but that he would do so by creating something real and powerful that they were proud of. He finished his thundering pitch with the promise, ‘I will blow you up into a monster group’.
Somehow, Will kept a lid on how impressed he was with Iovine’s words. As Iovine anxiously awaited some response from the band, Will held off speaking for as long as he could. He asked whether the label would financially support what he and the band wanted to do more than anything at that stage: tour. With Iovine agreeing to ‘throw that in as well’, a deal was agreed. The advance given to the band was around half a million dollars. Once the various expenses and commissions had been paid, this left Will and each of his bandmates with around $75,000 each.
After the meeting, Will celebrated in reasonably modest style with a dinner of chicken, vegetables and rice. He was quite happy to not go crazy because, for him, to secure a record deal was just the start of a bright new future.
The immediate future was to follow just the path they wanted it to: recording and mixing in the studio during the day, and performing live in the evening. During the recording sessions the band radiated energy and endeavour. While Will was perhaps the most focused member of the band, this did not mean he took himself seriously. The studio echoed with almost as much laughter as it did music, and it was Will who generated most of that laughter and proved to be quite the clown. He would crack jokes, say silly things and pull ridiculous faces. Whatever it took to keep people amused and their spirits high, Will was there to do it. His motivational tactics worked: more and more songs were being written and recorded in these sessions, and slowly an album was coming together. It would be called Behind the Front, a title intended to reflect the band’s yearning for authenticity. They felt that the music scene, and the hip-hop scene particularly, was dominated by people putting up a front that did not reflect their reality.
The album, released in June 1998, reflected the original songs that came from the studio sessions, together with refreshed takes on tracks that had been written for the unreleased album Grass Roots. As such, it embraced a lengthy period of energy, creativity and endeavour. The earliest reviews were in ‘underground’ publications. Elixir called the album ‘absolutely stunning’, and Request praised its ‘incisive social commentary’. Then, sensing a bandwagon starting up, mainstream journals also asked their critics to give the record a spin. Rolling Stone said the album was ‘an organic mixture of sampled melodies and live instruments aimed at those of us seeking a little enlightenment with our well-oiled boogie’; men’s magazine Arena said it ‘sounds great’, while British weekly Melody Maker said it ‘transcends all genres but sells out none’.
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.’
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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.