Black Eyed Peas - Behind the Front

Black Eyed Superbowl

Just heard that Black Eyed Peas will be providing the half-time musical entertainment at this year's NFL Superbowl [when I will be supporting the Green Bay Packers against the Pittsburg Steelers, though as I like both teams I can live with either win; whatever, it will be a night of bourbon and 5-meat pizza, so what's to lose?].

I guess both Black Eyed Peas and the NFL Superbowl are ripe for critical observation: those who think the pop sensibilities of BEP have usurped their rap roots, and those who don't rate American football as a sport. I can live with the former thinking as I don't care enough to care, but the latter is simply stupid.

Watching the divisional play-offs on Sky, the announcement of this musical interlude triggered memories of seeing Black Eyed Peas supporting Macy Gray probably in 2000 somewhere on the south coast in a place beginning with P. I couldn't find an exact reference on the net. BEP were new to me and most others there I suspect but it was cool to see 'real' rap/hip hop for someone who clearly hadn't up to that point. I bought their cd and enjoyed it then but listening today it didn't have the same effect - my middle-aged, middle-class, white-guy flirting with rap/hip hop having waned [but why not listen, by the way: I can listen to and enjoy punk, but I wasn't; the same with other genres that I don't want to explore here having made the point I trust; and I should perhaps at some point in this blog write about my favourite hip hop album, Mos Def's 'Black on Both Sides'].

Back to BEP - not sure about their current 'The Beginning'. I've read caustic and satirical reviews that rightly pick up on it's ring-tone tunes and sampling saturation. Just listening to tracks now from the album it's easy to be entertained but I'm not convinced there's longevity beyond that incipient and compulsive move to the beats and cuckoo catch of the clever melodies [which are not originals].

In a Superbowl that has for the last decade at least become a national celebration of patriotic fervour as much as football - if not more I'm sure for many - I wonder if BEP will get away with performing 'Play It Loud' with its opening lyrics

I pledge my allegiance,
To rhythm and sound.
Music is my medicine,
Let the rhythm pound

because this would be contrary to the Tea Party mentality of much of the entertainment and sentiment and focus [just wait for that immaculately-timed jet fly-by at the precise point the last warbling notes of the National Anthem are sung]. Those lyrics, by the way, strike me as a perfectly sound manifesto for living, as I trust this blog attests to, readership or no!