The Black Eyed Peas tease ‘new era’

The Black Eyed Peas’ leader will.i.am says the band are entering "a new era" and teased plenty more music is on the way.
The ‘Where Is the Love?’ hitmaker and his bandmates – apl.de.ap and Taboo – teamed up with Latin star J Balvin on ‘Ritmo’ last year, which is featured on the ‘Bad Boys For Life’ soundtrack, and the 44-year-old producer has promised fans can not only expect their first album since 2018’s ‘Masters of the Sun Vol. 1’, but a whole bunch of other "awesome" tunes this decade.
The ‘Voice’ coach told the Daily Star newspaper’s Wired column:
"It’s a new era.
"We are refreshing the brand so we can have lots of different perspectives and ­releases of our art, provide different music for people to live life colourfully.
"In 1998 we closed that ­decade with our first album (‘Behind the Front’).
"Ten years later ‘I Gotta Feeling’ became the biggest song for that decade.
"We ended the Teens ­making ‘Ritmo’, the biggest song in the Latin world.
"2020 we start a new ­decade fresh with crazy electricity ­awesome vibration and excitement."
The ‘My Humps’ hitmaker plans to drop more collaborations and singles in between albums, a move inspired by J.
He said: "J Balvin is like the dude.
"I learned a lot from him, mainly form how hard he works and the consistency of his art.
"J Balvin is ‘on’, it’s like a ­radio station, he’s always on.
"Musicians have cycles of putting out records but he is on permanently looking for more."
He added: "Yeah we have an album coming out this year but now I prefer to say we have a lot of releases coming out this year.
"A lot of collaborations, ­consistent quality and so yes now the Black Eyed Peas ‘are on’."
Meanwhile, will previously admitted he’s incredibly grateful that music has "changed all of their lives".
He told BANG Showbiz: "Music changed all of our lives and allowed us to take care of our families and allowed us to go back to the communities that we came from where music was the cavalry that took us out of the ghetto and took us out of the provinces of the world. And now with success from music, we’re able to go back to our communities and build stem programmes where we teach kids computer science and robotics."