Black Eyed Peas Go On Hiatus
Jul, 12 2011
Last week at their Alton Towers show in Staffordshire, UK, The Black Eyed Peas’ front woman Fergie, announced that the band is taking an “indefinite break” from making music. Enter the Four Horsemen…
This isn’t the first time BEP have gone on hiatus; they broke from 2005-2009 and returned with the hugely popular album, The E.N.D. in 2009.
This show is a “very special night,” Fergie told the crowd. This is the “last time we’re going to be in England for a long time.” “We want you to know that we love you and thank you for the support you’ve given us from the beginning.”
And as if on cue, the band and crowd immediately broke into “I Had the Time of My Life” from Dirty Dancing. You can watch the rhythmically and tonally-challenged foursome’s performance from Staffordshire by clicking here.
Front man will.i.am later Tweeted “The @Bep will take a break after the beginning…just like we did from monkey business to the e.n.d…but it doesn’t mean we stop creating.”
Perhaps they are taking time to focus on their "The Peapod Adobe Youth Voices" Music Academy we told you about.
-Court
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Stranger Than Fiction Friday: Black Eyed Peas’ Music Academy
Apr, 22 2011
This week pop stars The Black Eyed Peas announced that they are founding a music academy to benefit New York City’s youth. While it may seem inappropriate for a band who may rely more on technology than discernible talent, who've repeatedly accused of stealing other people’s music, and whose Super Bowl performance tanked, to be teaching teens skills they need to create music, you gotta give it to the BEP for helping kids.
According to the AP, the school – The Peapod Adobe Youth Voices – will allow local teens to learn how to use professional-quality video and music production equipment. The group’s philanthropic organization, the Peapod Foundation, has partnered with the Adobe Foundation, the charitable arm of the software maker, for the project.
Students ages 13-19 can start classes this July in the facility shared by the Urban Arts Partnership, which runs after school arts programs for at-risk teens.
Presumably classes like “Intro to Humps and Lumps,” “Boom Boom Pow: Liberating Other Artist’s Work for Personal Gain,” and “How to Eclipse Your Bandmates’ Popularity” will be left off the curriculum.
-Court
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Peas Picked For Super Bowl Halftime Show
Nov, 26 2010
The Black Eyed Peas have been confirmed as the half-time entertainment at Super Bowl 2011. Since the infamous 2004 performance featuring Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction," organizers have played it a little safer with a succession of classic rock acts. Now they've returned to pop by booking the Peas, whose 2009 album The E.N.D. sold over 7M copies worldwide and spawned several massive hit singles.
"I've been at every single one of them since that [2004 show]," Peas' rapper and producer will.i.am told Rolling Stone magazine of the Super Bowl. "The Prince one, the Paul McCartney one, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen." Last year's performers were The Who, whose show was a medley of their greatest hits including "Pinball Wizard," "Baba O'Riley," and "Won't Get Fooled Again."
"They could have picked anybody, they could rock a million and get Cheap Trick," will.i.am said. "I love me some Cheap Trick, those mother******s is dope. But it says something that they picked us." The Super Bowl show will take place at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on February 6.
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Peas Recruit James Cameron For 3-D Film
Jul, 4 2010
The Black Eyed Peas are releasing a concert film with a difference: it's going to be in 3-D, and it's going to be made by Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron, Will.I.Am told Vibe magazine. "We have the biggest director, because we are the biggest group on the planet," he said.
"We've toured from America and Europe, to the Middle East, South America, Asia and Africa," Will.I.Am said. "It's not like we go, 'Yo, we are international, you know what I'm saying? London and Paris!' Nah, that's just two cities. We want to go across the planet." It's not just going to show the band on tour, he added, because there would be a storyline too.
Cameron is far from the first big-name movie director to turn to music. One of Hollywood's greatest film-makers, Martin Scorsese, was widely praised for his films on The Band, The Last Waltz, and the Rolling Stones, Shine A Light. With Cameron in charge, the Black Eyed Peas' film is sure to be epic.
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No.1 Times Three, Easy For Black Eyed Peas
Feb, 27 2010
After nine weeks at No.1 with her debut single "TiK ToK," Ke$ha has been knocked off the top by the Black Eyed Peas, whose fourth single from their 2009 album The E.N.D., "Imma Be," becomes their third Hot 100 chart-topper from that album.
Despite several big hits before, like "Let's Get It Started" and "My Humps," the Peas had never had a No.1 until "Boom Boom Pow" made it to the top a year ago. It stayed there for twelve weeks and was only replaced by another Peas song, "I Gotta Feeling," which remained at the top for 14 weeks. Third single "Meet Me Halfway" looks like a dud in comparison, only reaching No.7 on the Hot 100; nevertheless it reached No.1 in the UK, Australia and Germany.
The last time a group had three singles from the same album hit No.1 was 19 years ago, when Wilson Phillips topped the charts with "Hold On," "Release Me" and "You're In Love" from its self-titled debut album (1990).
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The Black Eyed Peas
Aug, 30 2009
Female artists touring in Malaysia are encountering difficulties adjusting their show to the sensibilities of the predominantly Muslim culture. Both Avril Lavigne and Gwen Stefani were asked by officials to cover up, and Rihanna was then pronounced “sexier and more dangerous” than Avril, which meant that her proposed appearance in February caused a lot of bother for organizers until it was canceled due to Rihanna’s bust-up with Chris Brown. Current record-breaking chart-toppers the Black Eyed Peas have received worse news from Malaysia, because the government has actually banned most of its citizens from attending the concert planned for 25 September. The event is organized by Irish beer firm Guinness, but with alcohol forbidden under Islamic law the country’s Ministry of Information, Communication and Culture confirmed that "Muslims cannot attend. Non-Muslims can go and have fun." With over 60% of Malaysia’s 28 million population legally identified as Muslim, that destroys any hope for a large number of Black Eyed Peas fans to see their heroes in the flesh.
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The Black Eyed Peas
Aug, 14 2009
Can anybody topple the Black Eyed Peas? After the first single from new album The E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies) "Boom Boom Pow" spent 12 consecutive weeks at the top of the Hot 100, second single "I Gotta Feeling" knocked it off and spent the next seven weeks at the top. The combined 19 week spell at the top of the singles chart equals a record set five years ago by Usher, who spent 19 weeks on top with "Yeah!" followed by "Burn." Jason Mraz has also tied a chart record this week: his hit "I'm Yours" is at No.23 in its 69th week in the chart, equaling the record for longest Hot 100 chart run set by LeAnn Rimes' 1997 smash "How Do I Live." But one act this week was able to break a record: Sugarland topped the albums chart while setting a record they'd rather not have. Live On The Inside debuted at No.1 on the Billboard Top 200 with the lowest ever weekly sales for a Top 200 chart-topper. 75,000 sales were sufficient to hit No.1 while undercutting the previous record, set by Chrisette Michele's Epiphany, which hit top spot with 83,000 sales back in May.
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The Black Eyed Peas
Jun, 18 2009
With “Boom Boom Pow” still topping the Hot 100 after an incredible ten weeks, it should come as no surprise to learn that the Black Eyed Peas’ new album, The E.N.D., has shot straight to No.1 on the Billboard 200 in its first week of release. With just over 300,000 sales, it’s their first No.1 album from five attempts: remember, their first two albums went largely unnoticed by the public at large. It wasn’t until Fergie joined and 2003’s Elephunk became a slow-rolling success that the Peas hit the big time. Monkey Business (2005) was kept off top spot by Coldplay’s X&Y, but there was no such impediment this week, and with that first single doing so phenomenally well, it looks like the Black Eyed Peas will dominate the airwaves all summer. Elsewhere on the chart, Aventura hit No.5 with 47,000 sales of new album The Last, while Mos Def’s The Ecstatic reached No.9 thanks to 39,000 fans.
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