Black Eyed Peas - "The E.N.D."

I'm going to come out and say that I don't want first impressions of me to be reflected on the fact that I reviewed a Black Eyed Peas album. This is not the kind of music I usually listen to nor am used to listening to. That is a disclaimer. If anything I say in the remainder of the entry makes you want to pound my face in with a sledgehammer, please let me know so I can purchase a sledgehammer and a round trip plane ticket to my place of residence so that you can do so.

When the song "Boom Boom Pow" was released, it shattered the charts and soon rose to the top of the iTunes bestseller list. I did not like this song. I found it kind of annoying and just another song that was #1 on iTunes for a few days that would as a direct result never be a song that I would enjoy. As this cycled and recycled on the ghetto radio stations, I grew a fondness for it similar to a fondness that a white chick would have for a Beyonce song. This slight familiarity-induced fondness lead me to check out the other BEP singles...to, sort of, "humor" myself. I tried "Imma Be". And "Alive". And "Meet Me Halfway". I soon realized that I inexplicably loved The E.N.D. This is the part that kind of makes me want to buy the sledgehammer and pound it into my own face. After the dreadful "Where is the Love"...the unbearable "Let's Get It Started" (or, as known to some, "Let's Get Retarded"), and the virtually unlistenable "My Humps" (what is it even about?), I still had the nerve to enjoy listening to this music.

The things I enjoyed about "Alive" and "Meet Me Halfway" were that they're delightfully 80's. I saw lots of reviews on the iTunes store from eleven-year-old girls saying things sort of like "OMMGGGG BEP suck now, this sounds like a song from the 80s, omg don't buy" which I'm sure is an opinion held by a lot of the [lesser-educated] long-time fans of the Black Eyed Peas that I think I don't have because of my very recent induction into the fan club. The homage to musical styles of the past with modern hip-hop touches was carried out brilliantly - Will.i.am shows great production qualities with tracks such as these.

Other tracks where Will.i.am shows great behind-the-scenes prowess are cuts like "One Tribe" and "Imma Be", which contains very ghetto but also kind of delightful vox from Fergie, both of which are pretty similar to rap/hip-hot hits which are frowned upon by most indie reviewers but are also pretty high in musical value. You're listening and you're bopping along to the music and you like it, and then all of a sudden you think to yourself, "Holy crap, this is a rap song."

Will.i.am, Fergie, and those two other guys do crazy stuff to your mind with this record. If you're like me, you may not want to buy the whole thing, but I recommend getting all of the tracks mentioned in my review and also maybe "Rock that Body" because of the awesome Rob Base sample and "I Gotta Feeling" because it's actually shockingly catchy.