\n<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore Fergie came on board, Black Eyed Peas were an earnest, politically aware hip-hop group, complete with a song called \u201cPositivity.\u201d (Even their breakthrough hit, 2003\u2019s \u201cWhere Is the Love?,\u201d still bore traces of those origins, slipping a line about \u201cterrorists here livin\u2019 in the USA, the big CIA\u201d onto pop radio.) With his group deep into a post-Fergie era, Will.i.am recently returned to topical music via the song \u201cEast L.A.,\u201d\u00a0teaming up with fellow Black Eyed Pea Taboo for a pointed celebration of a community under siege by ICE.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m a Black-xicano, so this is for La Raza,\u201d Will raps on the song, which prominently prominently samples Santana\u2019s 1999 hit \u201cMaria Maria.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s response music,\u201d says Will, who was raised in a relatively rare Black household in that predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood \u2014 he has said that he spoke with a \u201cthick Mexican accent\u201d as a teenager.\u00a0\u201cIt ain\u2019t like we\u2019re in the studio, like, \u2018Yo, \u2018Where Is the Love\u2019 was massive, bro, let\u2019s make another one.\u2019\u00a0 We\u2019re responding to what we feel out in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt was important for us as Eastsiders,\u201d adds Taboo, \u201cto be able to give a love letter to our childhood and to all the people that Will to this day has advocated for.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWyclef Jean, who co-wrote and produced \u201cMaria Maria,\u201d texted Will his blessing for the single and its video, which was filmed in part at an anti-ICE protest in front of Los Angeles City Hall.\u00a0\u201cHe knows firsthand what we\u2019re talking about,\u201d Will says. \u201c\u2018Cause the group he is coming from is called the Fugees. He knows what it\u2019s like to migrate.\u201d (His sentiments also echo the original B-side to \u201cMaria Maria\u201d: a 1999 Santana song called \u201cMigra,\u201d with lyrics that describe immigration officers with \u201chate in your eyes.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Will was particularly outraged by the case of George Retes, a U.S. military veteran and citizen who was wrongly detained during an immigration sweep.\u00a0\u201cProtecting our borders is a must,\u201d Will says.\u00a0\u201cBut then there\u2019s the way that we\u2019re going about it \u2026 just sloppy, careless, and sprinkled with hate.\u00a0No civilized nation should mandate a practice where masked men and women go out and look for anybody that looks Latin and throw them in unmarked cars.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHe\u2019s equally impassioned about the plight of undocumented residents. \u201cThey work two to three jobs,\u201d he says. \u201cWhy not celebrate them and make them freaking citizens?\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
\n\tMeanwhile, Will.i.am, an early advocate of AI music who is an investor in the AI music generator Udio, says he was unfazed by the recent backlash to Timbaland\u2019s promotion of an AI \u201cartist\u201d made via a competing A.I. company, Suno. He points out that Black Eyed Peas recently introduced an AI \u201cmember\u201d of their group named Vida, to little notice. \u201cDid we get backlash for that? No, we didn\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cWhy? Because we\u2019ve already messed with it. It wasn\u2019t intrusive. It\u2019s an extension of us. We dabbled with it in the past. And more importantly, we didn\u2019t use it to criticize human work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tStill, he has broader concerns about generative AI, citing potential job losses\u2014 and the prospect of AI so sophisticated it doesn\u2019t even need human prompting to start creating music. \u201cWe\u2019re not full AI yet,\u201d he says. \u201cSo save the crying to make sure that the regulations and governance protects us, because in a couple of blinks, you don\u2019t need <\/em>to prompt a machine. It\u2019s not time to cry yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before Fergie came on board, Black Eyed Peas were an earnest, politically aware hip-hop group, complete with a song called \u201cPositivity.\u201d (Even their breakthrough hit, 2003\u2019s \u201cWhere Is the Love?,\u201d still bore traces of those origins, slipping a line about \u201cterrorists here livin\u2019 in the USA, the big CIA\u201d onto pop radio.) With his group<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1723,898,2466,68,2778,8669],"class_list":{"0":"post-15074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-backlash","9":"tag-east","10":"tag-ice","11":"tag-l-a","12":"tag-song","13":"tag-will-i-am"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}