Monkey Business

The Black Eyed Peas
“Monkey Business”
(A&M)
3.5 Stars



Sing it with me, you know the words: “My humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps.” Oh yes, the Black Eyed Peas are dumb. But they’re also a little bit brilliant.

From the opening strains of “Pump It” which is built on a sample from “Miserlou” (you know it as the theme music from “Pulp Fiction”), through the singles “Don’t Phunk With My Heart” and “My Humps,” their latest outing “Monkey Business” is compulsively danceable. Even if you don’t like it, you’ll move to it.

Lyrically the band is subpar. While there are moments of wit, the songs are largely standard light hip-hop fare: dancing, sex, and of course, self-aggrandizement, without many memorable lines. When they try to shoehorn social consciousness into the album, as in the closer track, “Union,” it’s incongruous and unsuccessful.

While it’s hard to argue morally with lyrics such as “Why do we keep killing each other, what’s the reason?/God made us all equal in his vision,” the forced rhyme and general lack of fun make this song is a marked and jarring departure from the rest of the album.

The musical aspect of “Monkey Business” is another matter entirely. Unapologetically poppy, musical experimentation never gets in the way of danceability on this album. But at the same time neither is it content to leave the beats unadorned and uninteresting. Instead, we get the middle ground: lots and lots of bongos, Latin influences on many of the songs, a song in Tagalog (“Bebot”), a Middle-Eastern sound on occasion, the fantastic marriage of “Miserlou” and handclaps, and even a piano outro on “My Humps” that gets points for unexpectedness.

Also, it’s hard not to appreciate a band that knows the value of a good horn sample, and this album has plenty, notably opening “My Humps,” an appropriately disco-ish bit on “Disco Club,” and throughout “They Don’t Want Music”—a tribute to adding jazzy musicality to beats. The song might be the Black Eyed Peas’ theme song. They didn’t invent any of the things they do, but they do them well, making musically inventive songs that still fall squarely into the dance-pop category.

If we’re going to talk guilty pleasures, though, it’s all about “My Humps,” a five-and-a-half minute ode to singer Fergie’s ass. It demands that you dance, even (perhaps especially) if you’re alone in your room and features lines such as “If you touch it, I’m-a start some drama/You don’t want no drama.”

It’s sublimely stupid—one of those songs that you would like ironically if you didn’t secretly like it straightforwardly.

Listening to “My Humps” in particular, but also much of the rest of the album, it’s surprising to recall that the Black Eyed Peas used to be a serious group. Somewhere along the line, they got Fergie, got retarded, and got paid. It’s tempting to bemoan this slide into silliness, but when the results are so entertaining, it’s more fun to think less and dance more.



—Staff writer Elisabeth J. Bloomberg can be reached at bloomber@fas.harvard.edu