Reality check: The Black Eyed Peas trade in optimism for anxiety with Elephunk

By Jeff Inman

Two years ago, Black Eyed Peas rapper Taboo wasn't worried about much more than topping himself. Sequestered in a studio just north of San Francisco, Taboo and his cohorts -- frontman and producer Will.I.Am, rapper Apl de Ap and new vocalist Fergie -- were working on the group's follow-up to 2000's Bridging the Gaps. The disc had yielded the band's first hit, "Request + Line," a seductive shout-out to radio DJs that featured Macy Gray. The album also managed to become an essential for anyone who thought hip-hop should be more about provoking than instigating, the group's positive flow and geometrically complex rhymes attracting purists and jaded gangstas alike.

The Peas were hoping that, after two months of work, the eight tracks they had just completed could one-up all that, morphing the band from free-spirited outsiders to commercial juggernauts. The quartet was planning to crank out a few more tracks after returning to Los Angeles. The band headed south the morning of Sept. 11. Everything had changed by the time the group got home.

"Nothing was the same after that," Taboo says. "None of those songs except 'Smells Like Funk' made it on the album. They were all cool and dandy, with a whole let's-have-fun thing. But we got in the mind frame of, 'What if this is our last day, or our last record?' We started thinking very negatively about the world and what was going on. We thought it was important to put that on the album."

It's a bold move for the Peas. While the band has never been shy about any subject, the group has always found a way to put a positive slant on things. With Elephunk, the Peas are more matter-of-fact than ever. Tracks like tense and gritty "Anxiety" and "Where Is the Love" -- a sort of hip-hop "What's Going On" stacked with subtle strings, endless questions and Justin Timberlake -- are stark assessments of the world's troubles. Relationships are crumbling. Panic has taken over. There's little room for optimism when bombs are dropping and greed is treated like a virtue. All the Peas can do is sit back and wonder, "Whatever happened to the values of humanity?/Whatever happened to the fairness and equality?" It's a harsh reminder that even the most sanguine can loose faith in difficult times.

It also makes the album's party anthems seem more like acts of defiance than simple good-time funk, the Peas offering a reason to get freaky one last time when things go nuclear. That might be giving tracks like the Bollywood-soaked "Elephunk Theme" and the borderline offensive "Let's Get Retarded" a little more credit than they deserve, especially when Will.I.Am orders everyone to "get retarded in here." But there's also a bravado in those songs that thugs like 50 Cent could never muster, a damn-everything attitude that makes those politically correct switches malfunction while forcing your ass bounce.

Taboo doesn't really care much about subtleties like that, though. He's proud of the fact that, aside from Timberlake and Papa Roach's Jacoby Shaddix, Elephunk is purely a Black Eyed affair. He says that the group's last album sported so many guest appearances, with everyone from Wyclef Jean and Mos Def to De La Soul and Jurassic 5 clocking in for a few rounds, that it felt more like a slumber party than a Peas record. This time the band wanted to stand alone.

"We didn't want to rely on our friends to sell records," he says. "If we're going to succeed, we want to do it on our own terms and know that it's because of what we've done rather than riding on someone else's coattails. And I think this record is good enough to do that. It's all about timing, and I think the timing is right for us now."

Former CityLife A&E Editor Jeff Inman can be reached at popularink@hotmail.com.