The Black Eyed Peas
The Beginning
Release Date: Nov 30, 2010
Genre(s): Pop, Rap, R&B, Pop/Rock, Dance-Pop, Contemporary R&B, Pop-Rap
Record label: Interscope
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Album Review: The Beginning by The Black Eyed Peas
Average, Based on 9 Critics
Based on rating B+
Nonstop partying is more than just a favorite lyrical theme for the Black Eyed Peas — it?s a business plan. Less than 18 months after dropping their last multiplatinum smash, The E.N.D., the tireless troupe are already back with another full-length disc. If you?ve heard first single ”The Time (Dirty Bit),” an undercooked attempt at remaking Dirty Dancing soundtrack staple ”(I?ve Had) The Time of My Life” as a dance-floor banger, you might be forgiven for wondering if the Peas? accelerated release schedule has come at the cost of diminished creative energy.
Based on rating 3/5
What is The Beginning "about"? Let will.i.am explain: "It's about being experimental and playing around with sick, crazy beats. What he means is that the Black Eyed Peas have created an album similar to 2009's enormously successful The END, but with more Auto-Tune and less input from the wonderful Fergie. It's a densely packed, busy record – getting to grips with all the samples and clubby beats takes dedicated listening.
Based on rating C-
It’s safe to say that The Black Eyed Peas know exactly what they’re doing and are not trying to hide it. If you believed that their new release, The Beginning, would be a return to their original sound (which has been lost since the highly underrated and unheard Behind the Front), you’re a damn fool. BEP have no intention of solidifying themselves in the hip hop community; Maybe in some respects they already have.
Based on rating 2.0/5
If you ask folks whether the Black Eyed Peas are more Afrika Bambaataa or Lady Gaga, you’ll find that the fairly innocuous quartet are quite polarizing. One thing’s for sure: production maestro will.i.am has these guys operating in another stratosphere in terms of success and crossover appeal. While Monkey Business and Elephunk rode the Fergie wave to mainstream success, it was last year’s The E.N.D.
Based on rating 2/5
Listening to the Black Eyed Peas' newest album feels a bit like gorging on KFC Double Down sandwiches smothered in chocolate syrup and whipped cream while watching a Jersey Shore marathon. Every aspect of the album targets the infantile reptilian part of our brain that's behind so many of our worst decisions. But, hey, if obnoxious and dumb is what they're going for, this is a grand success.
Based on rating 4/10
Described by the band alternately as "a fresh new perspective" and "the beginning of a new era of Pea world domination" and "what is actually happening in the world right now," The Beginning inevitably follows The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies), which boasted the number one single in America -- either "Boom Boom Pow" or "I Gotta Feeling" -- during fully half of 2009, including every single summer day (and then some). Although the lead single here prominently samples an '80s touchstone, and on the cover the Peas are displayed as pixelated preteens, Nintendo fashion, The Beginning isn’t a nostalgia trip.
Based on rating 2.0/5
Taking a cue from The E.N.D.‘s setlist of monolithically moronic party jams, The Beginning, the Black Eyed Peas’s sixth and least original album yet, is the sound of the pigs’ blood dumped on Carrie White’s head congealing into a sticky, hardened scab of forced good times. It’s the smell of desperate ass getting gotten in the ladies’ room of a D-list club while you’re just trying to figure out how to score some toilet paper in the next stall. It’s the sight of a party bus skidded out on the shoulder of a highway, with the entire army of knockoff Manolo Blahnik-wearing sorority sisters all sourly uniting in strength to push themselves back on the path toward Good Time Island.
Opinion: Fairly Good
BLACK EYED PEAS “The Beginning” (Interscope) “I’m a club rocker, that’s my personality,” will.i.am rasps over a disco thump during “Fashion Beats,” an old-school/new-school/old-school ouroboros, one of many on the Black Eyed Peas’ new album, “The Beginning.” It sounds as if he’s saying that his function trumps his art. It wasn’t always so. What the Black Eyed Peas pulled off last year, with their fifth album, “The E.N.D.” — besides the three No.
Opinion: Mediocre
Sixth studio album from the Los Angeles hip hop group. Garry Mulholland 2010 The dramatic, internet-fuelled crash in record sales has done weird things to pop. In decades passed, a gigantic global hit like previous Black Eyed Peas album The E.N.D. would infuse the mastermind behind it with a megalomaniac confidence, leading him to make the next album into a self-indulgent art statement that would either be masterpiece or brazen folly.
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