The Beginning (Deluxe Edition)

 Click Image to Buy The Beginning Deluxe Edition from the Black Eyed Peas

It's hard to blame The Black Eyed Peas for their unimaginative music. They started off incredibly strong with their early albums, "Behind the Front" and "Bridging the Gap," but after adding Fergie to their entourage for 2003's "Elephunk," The Black Eyed Peas' saw their name rocket up the charts with hits like "Let's Get Retarded" and "Where is the Love?." 


From that point on, will.i.am. and company have been nothing more than a dance club staple, churning out mindless hits with memorable hooks repeated for about four minutes on each track. They might claim to be writing anthems for their generation and the next, but they've completely sold out and at the rate their albums and singles sell, it's hard to fault them for it. 


Referencing everything from Styx and "Dirty Dancing" to Slick Rick and Fatboy Slim, The Black Eyed Peas definitely play to those born in the eighties, but they do little to rehash that decade musically. 


The lead single and opening track, "The Time (Dirty Bit)," is a partial cover of "(I've Had) The Time of My Life," the "Dirty Dancing" duet by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, with a little twist. Heavily Auto-Tuned vocals, rap interludes, and club beats form a clear separation from the original recording, but the main theme is more than enough to instantly turn their version into a hit. 


David Guetta, the co-composer of two of The Black Eyed Peas' biggest hits from their previous record, "Rock That Body," and "I Gotta Feeling," only lends his hand to one track on "The Beginning," but it's easily one of the feature moments. "The Best One Yet (The Boy)" is extremely reminiscent of Guetta's previous work, so much so that it could almost be considered a sequel. The words and music are different, but the style's the same and the lyrics seem to confirm the suspicions presented in "I Gotta Feeling." 


Like each of The Black Eyed Peas' records since "Elephunk," the lyrics are relatively unimaginative. Their track "Light up the night" opens with "wait a minute, uno dos, it's time to go adios;" just one example of their less than clever rhyme scheme. 


Although lyrics are usually the focus in the rap genre, The Black Eyed Peas' mixture of rap and pop draws all of the attention to their annoyingly unforgettable choruses. Listen to any Black Eyed Peas song straight through and it'll be stuck in your head for a week whether you're a fan or not. If anything, the simplified lyrics just make it easier to memorize all of the words by the end of the second play through. 


Is their music absurd? Of course. Will you hear it everywhere you go? Absolutely. 


The Black Eyed Peas are a party band and "The Beginning" is a party album. Although the album takes absolutely zero chances, it is still sure to find success thanks to a winning formula. Look for The Black Eyed Peas to continue releasing one album a year from now on. Just when you thought you got their most recent single out of your head, they'll be back again with another one. This is just "The Beginning."