Rating: N
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Remember when Black Eyed Peas were a low-key, organic, multicultural L.A. hiphop funk trio with underground buzz? What the fuck happened?When their last album, Elephunk, dropped, I tolerated their newfound pop sense. But if Elephunk was a bit on the sweet side, Monkey Business is like being beaten with a bag of sugar and then having its contents jammed down your throat. Doubled and tripled vocals and multi-layered harmonies galore, busy arrangements, beats simonized and sanitized and nary a cuss word in sight, it sounds like it was written by (or for) children on ecstasy. There’s even a song about how lying is wrong. What’s even more annoying than the Peas still clutching this true-hiphop image, and how weak their James Brown collaboration is, is how so much of this disc is pilfered from other songs under the guise of “clever referencing.” Yeah, right.
