Music - Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
 Terry Bartley  rates it:    Community rates it: (no ratings yet)
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If you'll think back to a little less then a year ago, I reviewed the Black Eyed Peas last album, Elephunk. I mentioned how I became fans of them because they played music that felt like real hip-hop music, like a throw back to rappers delight, and not so much about how much money they have and how pimp-like they are.
Whenever I first put this CD in my player I heard the first track, "Pump It," I'm sure all of you remember it from the Best Buy commercial. Next was their first single off Monkey Business, "Don't Phunk With My Heart." After that, was a dance-like song featuring Justin Timberlake, which is probably the weakest track on the whole CD. Not that this is a bad song, its just the worst one in this group of songs. After that was their latest single, a pretty awesome song called, "Don't Lie." Then, there was a five and a half minute song called "My Hump" that just seemed fun, but kinda weird.
I don't know if you've caught on yet, but none of these songs were what I was looking for on this CD. None of these are that classic hip-hop that caused me to fall in love with the Black Eyed Peas. Then I heard a little bit of classical music that led into a song called "Like That." This song features a ton of people and finally I found what I was looking for. It is crazy fast rap, with really clever rhymes and a great rhythm. When it came on I found myself saying, "What am I listening to," it was so awesome and then I knew that the Black Eyed Peas definitely stepped it up for this album after I heard this song. The remainder of the tracks include a lot more classic hip-hop, a song featuring James Brown, and I only regretted that it took me six tracks to be in awe of this album.
First I'm going to talk about their newest single, "Don't Lie." This song has a summer beach feel and talks about a couple who seems to do little more then lie to each other. It showcases all three rappers of the group with a cool chorus by Fergie. They really know how to release singles. They have some songs that might turn off mainstream music listeners and these people would never discover the awesomeness that is within the albums, but the Black Eyed Peas, record a few "single friendly" songs that would convince people to buy the album. The next song I've got to tell you about is "Like That." This song features all of the Black Eyed Peas, C-Lo, John Legend, Q-Tip, and Talib Kweli. I admit that I've never heard of any of the guests of this song, but I'm so glad they're there. This song sounds just like old school rap that went on forever and ever and whenever I listen to this song, I sorta hope this song did last day, the only thing I don't like about it is the fact that it ends. The song that I would say is the best song on the album is basically a duet between Will.I.Am and Jack Johnson. Will.I.Am sampled Jack Johnson's song, "Gone" and made a perfect blend of rap and acoustic progressive titled "Gone Going." The chorus could be referring to someone losing anything, but the rap verses direct the song to be the story of a successful musical artist who doesn't seem to care about the music anymore. He only cares about the stuff he now has and if he stays on this path his stuff is going to be gone.
Overall, this is a really awesome album, that stuck all the single songs in the beginning and placed the songs for the hardcore BEP fans at the end. I do think the singles are good songs, but they are just at a lower level then the other songs. I sorta wished they would have inter-mixed the songs more then to have divided them like they did. If I was reviewing the CD from track six on, this would so be a 5 out of 5 album, but since it took me five tracks to finally really be into this CD, I have to give it 4.5 cans out of 5.

Added:  Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Related Link:  BlackEyedPeas.com - The official Black Eyed Peas
Language: eng[ Did you find this review helpful?  Yes  No ]
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