by Danny White
Twitter, that increasingly valued barometer of public opinion, delivered a largely unimpressed verdict. One typical tweet read, ‘So at what point in man’s aural evolution did we resort to needing will.i.am to shout “yo” over Stevie Wonder?’
There was little comfort for Will in the knowledge that the evening’s other much-criticized act was his very own client, Cheryl Cole. Her half of the duet with event organizer Gary Barlow on Lady Antebellum’s ‘Need You Now’, left many unmoved.
It was Cole herself who, feeding the media’s ongoing love of stories involving Will tweeting in inappropriate situations, claimed he had been set to Tweet while alongside the Queen onstage. ‘I actually had to warn him as we walked on to the stage,’ Cole told Graham Norton later. ‘He had the phone at the ready. I’m not joking, I had to say to him, “Put that phone away right now before I kill you”.’
Will had happily tweeted photographs of himself at the event, including one of him alongside Prince William, the prince positively towering over Will in the photograph. ‘I just realized I’m the shorter “will.i.am” #diamondjubilee’, Will wrote on the accompanying tweet. He also posed alongside a group of royal guardsmen, commenting that he was now ‘brit.i.am’.
He also got himself snapped alongside Robbie Williams, Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney and Annie Lennox. As protocol dictated, Will was not to have a side-by-side photo of himself with the Queen, though he was officially snapped shaking her hand backstage. ‘I love the queen’, he Tweeted later. ‘She’s super dope. She reminds me of my mum. I mean, my mum and no money and the Queen is obviously loaded, but just their strength and perseverance.’ His admiration for Debra is never far from Will’s mind, her presence never far from his existence and work.
8 Heart and Soul
When he is interviewed by the press, Will often chooses to break off from the traditional interrogative path to read the interviewer – and therefore his or her eventual readers – text messages he has exchanged with his mother, Debra. In April 2012, he did just this when he was quizzed by Radio Times magazine. His rendition began with a message his mother had sent him about her involvement in his charity:
‘Hey Willi, I want to let you know that I feel ten feet tall right now. I want to be a part of all that. I want to be involved in all these projects. I want to be part of your plan, I want to soar with you. You are the fuse that’s needed to set the bombs off. It’s about to explode baby boy.’
‘That’s cool, Mom,’ Will had replied,
‘That’s why I put you on board. Yay.’
Debra then wrote: ‘Thank you so very much. My heart feels like it will burst, I love you so very much, not for what you give me or what you’ve done, but for who you are. A son with a very, very big heart.’
The exchange concluded with Will writing: ‘Of course, Mom. You built my heart.’
The key figure in Will’s life, Debra is also now a pivotal part of one of his charities, the i.am.home Fund, which was set up to help those in jeopardy of losing their homes due to the economic crisis in America. Asked by The New York Times how the charity would operate, Will gave a simple description of its activity, adding that in setting it up he was ensuring he was true to the message of the campaign video he had created for Barack Obama in 2008. ‘I say: “Let me pay for that house. It’s yours. You don’t got to pay me back.” It’s that simple. Why am I doing it? Because I said, “Yes We Can.”’
His other foundations work in the fields of education and employment. The i.am.angel Foundation, for instance, was launched in 2009. Speaking about the charity, Will told StarCam: ‘The world doesn’t need another musician, they need another Bill Gates’. A man who combines those two contributions would be extraordinary – and, in the future, Will might just be that man. The opening aim of the charity was ‘the idea of providing assistance to needy students wanting to attend college through a program entitled i.am.scholarship.’ That scholarship program has grown and grown since. ‘I know my purpose is to continue to inspire young people because it’s just going to keep inspiring me back,’ Will said. ‘I want to do my part. I want to invest in America’s future and I want to send you to college. i.am here to let you know that you can be anything you want to be. You are the future of the world.’
As well as devoting his time, energy and name to his foundations, he has also put his money where his mouth is – since 2010, he has donated a figure estimated to be in excess of £1million to them. He is passionate about his charity work and the opportunities it brings to those who sorely lack them. He told one interviewer that his primary reason for joining The Voice was the hope that the renewed fame it would bring him might offer him further ‘leverage’ in the charitable sphere. ‘It’s like the beginning of my philanthropic career,’ he said.
He is also partnering with Coca-Cola on an interesting recycling initiative, which, with his characteristic flair for attention-grabbing word play, he has called Ekocycle (the first part of the word, ‘Ekoc’, is, of course, ‘Coke’ spelled backwards). The mission is to encourage large corporations to stop churning out waste. ‘I’m like, “What if I can take their by-products and make new products?’ he explained to ES magazine. ‘What if I can take their bottles and turn them into jackets and glasses, and I could make a base cloth out of their aluminium to make bicycles and chairs and computers and phones?’
Later, he explained an even grander vision: to put Ekocycle alongside the stature of Google and Twitter in terms of vocabulary. ‘The key is to “become a verb”,’ he said, in an interview with the Financial Times. ‘Google became a verb. Twitter became a verb. How does Coke become a verb? Ekocycle – and you redefine the word recycle.’ It is a big ambition, yet experience has shown that betting against Will achieving his dreams is a risky move.
How, many have wondered, does he manage to keep succeeding in his endeavours? Be it his music career, his business or charity, for Will, it all keeps coming back to one thing: activity. He feels that many people have lost sight of how much more valuable it is to play a good game, rather than merely talk one. In these days of online social networks, on which many people simply brag and exaggerate their achievements, lots of people have lost their way. ‘People have got it all mixed up,’ he said. ‘Supporting is actually doing. Let’s change the word “supporting” and use the word “doing”. What are you doing to help America and Obama? Donating money to the campaign? Or going into communities and changing people’s lives?’ In a more concise encapsulation of his guiding philosophy, he said: ‘If you ain’t doing something you’re doing nothing’.
One day, Will could publish an engrossing book of motivational wisdom. In the meantime, he stays true to his guiding philosophy and keeps on doing something. In 2012, off the back of his success on The Voice and his shoulder-rubbing with the British monarchy, Will teamed his charity up with The Prince’s Trust. ‘As a judge on The Voice, the people of the UK have welcomed me into their sitting rooms week after week and I feel very much at home here,’ he said. ‘Working with The Prince’s Trust, I am joining the mission to help transform the lives of disadvantaged young people living in underprivileged neighbourhoods in the UK.’
In donating to the Trust, his thinking was that its work carries with it the potential to transform an entire neighbourhood. He used as examples the founders of Facebook and Twitter. ‘If one Mark Zuckerberg comes from Brixton, then Brixton is changed forever’, he told ES magazine. ‘If one Jack Dorsey comes from East London, then East London is changed forever’.
When he met Prince Charles, the morning after the Diamond Jubilee flotilla, it was an unlikely meeting in more than one sense. Charles, though, left Will impressed. The Prince had just found out that his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, had been hospitalized with a bladder infection. ‘So it was heavy,’ Will said. ‘He spoke very passionately about inner cities and philanthropy, and I got into the car afterwards and I thought: “That guy is something else” – because he had just found out about his father but he still kept the
meeting. That guy is awesome.’
With the aforementioned i.am.home arm of the charity, we can return to the start of Will’s story. All too often, people who have achieved vast riches through their fame make the proud boast that they have never forgotten where they came from. Sometimes, these claims are little more than vanity – a declaration of self-interested lip service to the communities they left behind. In Will’s case, the sentiment is far more sincere. ‘The reason I started i.am.home is because I come from poverty,’ he said. ‘I survived and came out of it because you guys support my music. My one day dream was to have a house, buy a house for my mom and take care of family.’
As we have seen, he fulfilled that dream, and enjoyed one of the proudest moments of his life as he did so. For the never-satisfied, ever active Will, that proud moment only awakened in him a desire to do more of the same. ‘Now that I’ve achieved that goal I can’t forget what it was like – living on the verge. Helping out families in need is a personal venture. Something I feel I need to do.’ The word ‘need’ underlines so much of his existence: it is a need, more than a desire, that drives so much of Will’s ferocious, frenetic lifestyle. His engine is oft powered involuntarily.
The rewards of his resultant stature keep on coming. Not all are rewards of richness or fame, some are just the places his status can take him to, the experiences it brings to him. In the spring of 2012, he revealed that NASA had approached him to write the first song to played on the planet Mars. ‘I don’t think I can talk about it, but there is a rocket going to Mars,’ he told Graham Norton on his show. ‘It lands in August and when in lands it will send back a signal to earth and that signal will be the song.’
This project with NASA is to help inspire kids to get involved in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. ‘My mission is to inspire the youth to care about education.’ This out-of-this-world project would take Will’s quest to inspire to a whole new dimension. He could hardly wait for it to happen.
As for his activity on planet Earth, Will remains as restless as ever. In July 2012, he passed another milestone when he enjoyed his first UK number one as a solo artist. Thanks in part to his successful appearance on The Voice, and the accompanying stature it gave him in the UK, his single ‘This is Love’ hit the top of the British singles chart. For Will, this was a moment of substantial pride. He felt he had proved some of his doubters wrong. ‘I’ve had number ones before with The Black Eyed Peas, but to me this one means so much, because I know people thought I can only be successful in The Black Eyed Peas. They were wrong,’ he said.
He had collaborated with Eva Simons on the track, and spoke with enormous passion about her talent. ‘There are a lot of girls that are pretty and that can sing a little bit,’ he said. ‘And they are usually connected to some powerful dude that gets them a whole bunch of songs that some unknown people did in the bedroom.’ Somewhat uncomfortably, many might feel this description would apply to Cheryl Cole. It is unlikely Will would agree with that, but there is no doubting how much Simons had energized him. ‘So whenever I switch gears musically or change directions, it’s because of the adrenaline and the influence of being around the world and dealing with different people like Eva,’ he said.
He continued work on his next solo album, #willpower, which he hoped to fashion into a complex work, replete with a number of different styles. ‘There’s classical s**t, like just me and a guitar and an orchestra or me with just an orchestra and a kid’s choir,’ he said. ‘There’s some ghetto, ugly, dirty stuff. And then there’s dance stuff, global world stuff and, like, avant garde, left-of-centre, for-art’s-sake music that has nothing to do with getting played on the radio. I’m just art-ing out. It’s pretty diverse.’
Originally, the album’s title had been Black Einstein. Fergie had first announced the original name on Hollyscoop.com. ‘I believe Will is coming out with a solo album, I’ve heard it, it’s called Black Einstein, and it’s amazing,’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting for him to come out with this for so long, ’cause I want it. He won’t give it to me. I want it for the gym. He’s so amazing. Such a genius lyricist and I’m really excited for his project.’
Work on the album took place predominantly in Los Angeles, London and Paris. Will was deliberately taking his time on it. ‘I didn’t want to force this album,’ he told Boombox. His fear that self-indulgence might lead to him losing his grasp on reality was clear. ‘A lot of times an artist can over-think things. You get to the point that you are so wrapped up in your music that you feel like you can just put buffalo knuckle sound effects on a track. It’s like, “Yo, you seriously making buffalo knuckle noises on a beat and you think that’s hot?”’ Instead, he hooked-up with some of the cream of the music scene: ‘I worked with LMFAO. I got songs with Chris Brown, Ne-Yo, Britney Spears and a few other people,’ he said.
Whether on his solo material or on other artists’ own albums, Will is often to be found in the recording studio. In September 2012, he worked in the studio with former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger. She tweeted a photograph of them at work, with the message: ‘Me and @iamwill in the studio … making la la la la la’s in LA.’ Will loved it. ‘I made this song with Nicole Scherzinger that you would never expect,’ he said. ‘This classic piece of music that I did with Nicole, it’s beautiful. That girl sings like I’ve never heard anybody sing like that in pop culture.’
One day as they worked, an earthquake shook Los Angeles. Will quipped on Twitter: ‘There was a #Earthquake in l.a just 1min ago ... If it wasn’t ... it was the beat I’m making in the studio for @NicoleScherzy... #califault. [sic].’
He has also recently worked with Rita Ora, who offered an interesting insight into his style of work after he produced her song ‘Fall in Love’. ‘will.i.am is incredible,’ she told Digital Spy. ‘He’s like a genius and he works so fast. I don’t know how his brain is so like ... He can do so many things at once and does it the best as well. He doesn’t half-heartedly do anything. We did “Fall in Love” in a day and night and then we went out and had a drink.’
He has also worked with the young prince of pop himself, Justin Bieber. Will has described the Canadian sensation as his ‘little brother’. ‘I like him because he’s going to be around for a long time,’ he told MTV News. ‘And he’s really talented … [He is] very talented, beyond what people probably think he’s capable of. I’ve worked with him and [seen] how talented he is.’ There were certainly no ‘cool’ points to be had in making this sort of statement, but Will preferred to tell it as he saw it. He continued: ‘In the industry, especially as it’s changing, you’re going to [need] some type of real talent. Maybe people can’t see [it], right now, but ten, fifteen years from now, he’ll still be around.’
Speaking of longevity, another of the artists Will worked with on #willpower is one of the record industry’s longest-lasting icons: Mick Jagger. The Rolling Stones frontman appears on one of the album’s singles, ‘T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)’. Will was pleasantly surprised by the ease with which he secured Jagger’s involvement, particularly following the rather starry, distant way the Stones had behaved when the Black Eyed Peas toured with them. Rather than having to embark on a lengthy, quid pro quo negotiation via gate-keepers, due to a relationship he had built with Jagger since The Black Eyed Peas opened for the Rolling Stones in 2007, Will was simply able to call Jagger directly to ask him if he was interested in guest-appearing on the song.
The two had struck up an immediate rapport backstage. ‘Mick and I got along really well,’ he told the Mirror. ‘He took my number and wherever he was in the world he would text me to hang out. “Yo, Will, I’m in Brazil. Are you here?” or “I’m in LA, where are you at?” Eventually, we hung out in 2008 at a technology conference in New York. You wouldn’t believe we have similar friends that are tech enthusiasts. We have so much in common. And of course he showed me his famous strut at the bar.’
So, when Will contacted Jagger afresh to enquire about a collaboration, he got
an affirmative response. ‘Come down,’ Jagger told him, ‘I want to hear the song.’ Once the old rocker heard it, he agreed to join Will in the studio the very next day to record his part. Will’s long-term producer and friend Jimmy Iovine could hardly believe his luck when he got the chance to produce a song featuring Jagger. He put the scale of his excitement into words for Will when he said, ‘When I was younger I wanted to be Mick Jagger – what A Tribe Called Quest is to you, that was Mick for me.’
Will believes in striking while the iron is hot, and life has sometimes cruelly shown this to be a sensible approach. The year 2012 began with the unexpected death of another icon with whom Will had worked. Whitney Houston died in Los Angeles at the age of forty-eight. When Will heard of her death, he posted his immediate feelings on Twitter. ‘I’m so sad, Whitney Houston was so kind, sweet, wonderful, amazing, talented and a true gift to the world’, he tweeted. He added later: ‘#iwillalwaysloveyou’.
Later still, when Will remembered working with the soul star, his memories included the omnipresent figure of his mother, Debra. ‘When I was working with Whitney Houston she reminded me of my mom, just how graceful and polite she was,’ he told the Guardian. ‘I told Whitney this and she said: “Let me see the proof of that, you should bring her down!” I called up and said: “Ma, get your butt down to my house this minute! Whitney Houston wants to see you so she can see your personality!” She loved Whitney.’
It was a testing start to what was proving a typically industrious year for Will.
Meanwhile, there were other challenges to be negotiated. He and his two male bandmates filed a lawsuit against their former financial adviser, Sean Larkin, accusing him of costing them over $3 million (£1.8 million). (Fergie has her own separate financial manager and therefore was uninvolved in this suit.) Their suit claimed that Sean M. Larkin ‘falsely represented ... on numerous occasions that he was taking care of everything and that they had nothing to worry about’, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Larkin had, several months previously, admitted in a deposition that he had ‘got in over my head with the amount of clients I had’.