Before the music and before the fame, I loved Apl for Allan Pineda, for being a brother that he is and for the inspiration - for him to actually come to the States from the Philippines and make something of his life. That's inspirational.
— Taboo
We're not just three guys in a rap act. We want all sorts of people at our gigs.
All I've got to say is if I'm a sellout, I'm selling out arenas all over the world, and I'd rather be selling out arenas than selling out of my trunk on the corner of my block.
It's more about the music and doing good shows than it is about our ethnicities. We're not trying to label ourselves as the all-around universal ethnic group. It's not a gimmick.
It takes one person to stand up for what he believes in. I believe there's been an injustice in Arizona. I oppose Bill 1070.
Fergie's married. I'm married. A lot of the band members have families as well.
We just decided to make our dancing as important as our MCing and our production. It's an element in hip-hop that a lot of people are afraid to use.
Hip-hop is huge in Canada, in Australia - everywhere.
It was great to have my son see if you chase your dreams sometimes they become reality.
We're able to blend and rock any crowd. If you put us on a tour with Garth Brooks, we'll take his crowd too.
I'm the performer of the group. My thing is like, every time I come on stage, I always bring it 120 percent, 150 percent.
I'm not the greatest writer or the great rapper.
I didn't want to be a deadbeat dad, so I said, ‘OK, my mission is to provide for my son in the future,'
If I was going to play any video game, it'd be things like 'Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!,' 'Street Fighter' and 'Mortal Kombat.'
My personal music style is very Latin and very soulful. It's dance meets hip-hop.
Now that I'm older, I appreciate my culture and I appreciate Spanish. I feel bad I didn't pick up on it earlier.
I'm a b-boy for life. I'm a dancer, I started with free style dancing and b-boying during the ‘80s and I always said to myself that when I get the chance to do my own thing, I will always have the b-boy element and the dance element because that's where I come from.
My life got turned upside down when I found out I had cancer.
Fergie brought her own style. She is a fashion icon, but she's lovable and approachable.
You gotta understand a lot of hip-hop kids are going to have the hip-hop mentality. And it's sad because they're not educated enough to understand what hip-hop culture is really about.
We want to be able to make our own songs and write our own arrangements. We want to incorporate the live sound so we can be free onstage and in the studio recording. That way we can come up with original and creative stuff.
Our daughter is a miracle baby, and having time with her and my sons means everything to me - they're why I kept fighting.
We didn't expect 'Boom Boom Pow' to come out the box and be so successful.
We grew up with break-dancing and MCing, the old school, that whole era of just having a good time and knowing that the music was good.
Let's face it - negativity sells records.
In order to maintain your longevity, you have to know the business. It's not about just rapping and performing.
We're a positive type group, not a preachy group, but we want to be able to let the people know that we are conscious about what's going on in the world.
Will.i.am is the genius of the group. He's the one that keeps everything together creatively.
You really need to stop and appreciate what you have, the love you have from your family, your friends, the love that you have for yourself.
I emptied the trash and wiped down tables. But my job that I remember the most was picking up horse manure for the Electrical Parade.
I'm also a martial-arts practitioner, so it was an easy transition to go do 'Street Fighter,' which is action-packed and let me showcase my acting and martial-arts capabilities.
I was in a group called Pablo, while Will.i.am and apl.de.ap were a part of the Atban Klann. They signed to Ruthless Records with Easy-E. When Easy-E passed away in 1995 they changed their name to the Black Eyed Peas and asked me if I wanted to be a part of it. The rest is history.
Black Eyed Peas music appealed to everybody and that's why we incorporated EDM influences, dance influences, house influences, and we mashed it up with the Black Eyed Pea melodic pop sensibility that still has bounce to it.
I'm building my own brand outside of the Peas. It's not Black Eyed Peas, it's Zumbao. Zumbao is different from the Peas because it's all on me and I can't feed off of anybody other than me.
I've never been the attention-getter of Black Eyed Peas.
Hey, I was one of those hip-hop kids who used to hate on things that would become popular.
In L.A., we played rock venues because we had a band, which hip-hop venues couldn't accommodate. And within that, we created a show which we could put on in front of anybody.
Our show is all about energy and all about the skill, so we never have to alter it for different audiences, although maybe we might get crazier at a punk-rock show. With kids moshing and crowd-surfing, we might have to get crazy as well.
We all had to dodge the idea we were spokespeople for our races. Like, 'Hey, it's the Mexican Guy! The Filipino! The Chick!' We've always stood up to it and said, 'Fine, bring it on and we'll show you how we rock.'
It's all about evolution and for us, we try to think outside the box and not try to duplicate what we've done in the past.
From alternative to Brazilian to hip-hop to old R&B, that's what we listen to. And we don't just listen to it only if somebody plays it. We actually go out and buy these types of things and support different forms of music because we love them.
We're a direct mirror of the audience, and that shows how hip-hop has expanded. It's no longer just an urban thing, and it's no longer just an American thing, either. It's a universal thing.
That's the beauty of Black Eyed Peas, we don't pigeonhole ourselves into just one category. We're the chameleons of hip-hop.
We were just going for growth, bigger sound, just a spectrum of people. More global. That's how we decided to do a song like 'Where is the Love' - it allowed us to tap into a broader audience, because the message means a lot to us.
Apl is very humble, but he's humongous in the Philippines.
Just being in the industry that I'm in, you get people building up your ego - 'Oh, you guys are the best, you guys are gods.' So I started believing the hype - 'Yes, I am a god!'
I'm not into fame and ego.
I'm happily married; I love to spend time with my wife going to movies, restaurants and travelling.
I grew up listening to a lot of hiphop music and R'n'B. Bands like A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, Boogie Down Productions, Cypress Hill, New Edition, Bob Marley, Prince, Stevie Wonder, and a lot of Spanish music.
Before we had Fergie, it was me, will.i.am, and apl, and we were showcasing our dance moves in our videos.
