Will.I.Am Photo: www.bbemusic.com

Hip Hop has always been a free flowing form of expression that has been exploited and misrepresented by the corporate powers that be. They often make the mistake of trying to slice, dice, soften, prepackage, and label the original message that the artist meant for the masses to hear. This is the cause of the processed feel to the art form. Occasionally members of the fraternity of planet rap slip through the cracks of labeling, whether it be through indie record labels, the underground, luck, or even all three. It’s ironic because in all actuality, the term ‘underground’ is a label in it’s own right. Somewhere between all of these ‘labels’ falls Will.I.Am. Performing since about age 13, he finally got his break at the tender age of 17, by signing with the late Eazy-E’s (RIP) Ruthless Records. At a glance Will.I.Am seems to have the same Hip Hop ‘fundamentalist’ views of anyone from the ‘underground’, but after hearing what he has to say you get the feeling that he is a little different from the rest.
“Hip Hop is what it always has been, but now there are too many labels - underground, gangsta, and conscience,” explains Will.I.Am. “I liked it better when everything was Hip Hop. When you had Public Enemy, Heavy D, A Tribe Called Quest, NWA, Stetsasonic, Digital Underground, Rakim, and Kid ‘N’ Play out at the same time, and it was all called Hip Hop.”
Easy targets in the music is those who promote the abundance of materialism, but unlike those ‘conscience’ or ‘underground’ cats, Will.I.Am actually defends today’s brand of Rap, “Materialism has always been a part of great Hip Hop. I quote EPMD, ‘You bought our album Strictly Business and you thought it would fold, thirty days later the LP went gold. Then I can quote Rakim, ‘I cold show my rings and my fat gold chains, grab the mic like I’m on soul train.’”
Before you can shoot him down with the fact that the ‘golden’ years of Rap is incomparable to today, he opens fire, “You see, cats have always been on that material shit, it’s just those cats had skill as well. Nowadays cats use underground, or materialism as a crutch, because they actually lack skill.”
Will.I.Am’s solo album Lost Change is out now, and will give us the chance to hear his perspective of what our genre, or even music in general, is. His album does have the does and doesn’t fall into the status quo of album formulas. He does have a slew of guests on his CD, but they are not the big mainstream names that load up most of today’s albums. Vocal guests include Planet Asia, Madusa, Mykill Myers, Madd Dogg, Terry Dexter, and Huck Finn. While production was handled by Will.I.Am himself, he does flex skills that lie outside the drum machine by teaming up with musicians such as Mike Fratenuno on bass, George Pajon and J Curtis on guitar, Chuck Prada playing percussion, and The Horn Dogs’ Printz Board and Tim Izo on brass and reeds.
Lost Change is being released through the London-based indie BBE, and Will.I.Am beams, “I’m I happy putting shit out through BBE…I’m free to do whatever it is I want. It’s the same as Black Eyed Peas being on Interscope. It’s two different things, but I’m just as free doing either project.”
Will.I.Am appears to feel that the music’s dry spell definitely needs to be put to an end, “It’s cool right now, cats are learning more out of business-wise, but creatively it’s waking up at a slow pace. It’s a little segregated right now.”
Will.I.Am stepped away to record his solo album, hoping the public can hear his stellar skills he has for the production side of the game. With all the talk of the different sides of the game, and why is or isn’t the culture where it needs to be, Will.I.Am does have some hope of adding to or changing what is the status quo with more than just an album, “The label we started is called, ‘VS’ -Visual Stereo. We want to give the consumer more than just music - visual art, and sound. I’d rather not go into details on what we plan to do…Just look out for VS.” Just because he’s got a full plate, doesn’t mean that the Black Eyed Peas are no more. For the BEP fans out there, don’t worry, they’re in the process of recording album three as we speak.
When it seems things are going smooth, we get a wake up call like the attacks on the World Trade Center. Because this event obviously affected everybody in North America, and to some extent the world, it’s no surprise that it affected ours, the Hip Hop community. Will.I.Am says, “We toured the day after the attacks. I was scared, but you gotta go and do God’s work when he calls on you, and help heal minds when in panic.”
Music seems to be our key source to be in tune with the universe, rap is just one integral part of that source. With so many names, labels, and just plain sugar in the game, it’s hard to even tell what’s what anymore. Will.I.Am takes a stab at giving his own definition. “Hip Hop is whatever you add to it…Hip Hop was music, before it was Hip Hop. James Brown and Led Zeppelin are Hip Hop, just in the raw. You can’t make peanut butter with out peanuts. Hip Hop has merely been the alteration of music that has already existed. Now it’s time for cats to learn more about musical theory, and form a new form of ‘Hip Hop’ music.”
Whether he really does implement some new change or growth to the genre or not, he’s gonna keep on keepin on. Really, who are we to judge what is or isn’t music? In the end it is artistic, creative, and beautiful to the creator, and that really is all that matters.
As for Will.I.Am - he is going to be like most artists, and recreate, add to, and reinvent the art and himself. “I’m just going to expand my mind space…and learn about all my spiritual and mental capabilities.”

By Joseph Mandat (jmann@rapsheet.com)
Courtesy of Rapsheet.com

Purchase/Listen