Cut-Price Pop Tarts

I used to be a fan of the Black Eyed Peas. Not the kind of rabid fan who goes to all their concerts and frequents forums devoted to them: I just really liked their music.

Early this year, or perhaps late last year I saw a video clip for a song I'd heard playing in stores quite a bit. I hadn't the slightest idea it was by the Black Eyed Peas until I saw the clip. There was some annoying woman in short shorts prancing around and lip-synching. At first I thought she was just a video-clip bimbo, then I thought perhaps she was a female singer the Peas had collaborated with just for the song; after all, they had previously collaborated with Macy Gray and Esthero.

Then I read in the SMH that the Black Eyed Peas' new song 'Don't Phunk With My Heart' had just gone number one. I never wade in the pool of pig-shit that is commercial radio in the hope of hearing a song I like: I opened up Limewire and downloaded it...

Honestly, I expected to like what I heard. I was not prepared for how utterly shithouse that song was. I literally only kept it on the computer long enough to play 30 seconds or so of it for Gam before I sent it straight to the recycle bin. Piece of crap!

That's when I found out 'Fergie' was now a permanent member of the Black Eyed Peas. They'd been given a total makeover, and it sucked.

Todays Sydney Morning Herald has a puff piece on Fergie, and the interviewer rambles on about how she used to be a hard-working child star and that she got her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake to perform guest vocals on 'Where is the love'. I never knew she dated Justin Timberlake or that the Peas' allowed that squeaky-voiced Michael Jackson impersonator on that album, but it says a lot. It really does. The article somehow omits mentioning how Fergie got wasted prior to one concert and peed her pants on stage, it speaks derisively of 'hard core fans' who paint her "as the Yoko Ono figure who wrecked the Peas' hip-hop credentials and made them into a pop band".

Now, I'm not a hard-core fan. I'm not a hard-core fan of any band. I don't blame her for 'wrecking' the Peas hip-hop credentials- she didn't exactly point a gun at them and say "let me join your group or I'll blow your brains out!". The fact she joined is entirely their fault. It doesn't make her any less shite, however.

I don't give a damn for the fact she's white and female. To imply that the reason the band now lacks credibility among its previous fans is because they allowed a white female to join is to trivialise fans' gripe with the Peas. Hell, I'm a white female. I took offence at the interviewer's introduction on how, when she discovered she was to be interviewing Fergie and not Wil.i.am, she quickly ditched "some planned questions about race politics and hip-hop, seeing as Fergie's the only white member of the group". Fuck off! Who says a white member of the group can't answer questions on race politics and hip hop? I might think she's crap, but she's still part of the group! Sure, her answer is going to be from a different perspective to the other band members, but why assume she isn't going to be able to answer the questions?

"Oh, sorry, I'm white, I don't answer questions like that!"

Bah.