Black Eyed Peas’ new album could reportedly miss out on the UK Top 40 after a sales flop.
The band’s latest record ‘Masters of the Sun Vol. 1’ – their first in eight years and the first without Fergie – was released on Friday (26.10.18) and it’s set to fail to break into the rankings this week.
An industry insider told The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre column: "Ten years ago the Black Eyed Peas were one of the biggest bands in the world — but these latest sales figures are absolutely disastrous.
"The band waited eight years to release an album which has been expensive to make and completely hasn’t connected with audiences.
"There is no chance of it being anywhere near the Top 20, which is a real fall from grace given their success in the past. The sales figures aren’t looking good at all and the group’s tour isn’t performing well either."
The ‘Where Is The Love?’ hitmakers – made up of will.i.am, Taboo and APL.DE.AP – are currently on a run of the UK, and the group have described the new LP as a return to their roots.
Will previously said: "If you like the true old school type of hip-hop this is the album for you. If you’re looking for ‘Boom Boom Pow’ then…"
Meanwhile, ‘The Voice’ UK judge has also admitted the band were put down by record labels at the time of their breakthrough 2002 debut ‘Elephunk’, and said bosses didn’t expect it to make a big impact.
He explained: "You know, 2002 that was hard. We [had] just wrote ‘Where Is The Love?’ after 9/11 and it was hard.
"In 2002 we didn’t know what the hell was going on and ‘Elephunk’ was important to us, the whole record was complete.
"The record company was like I don’t hear any hits and that broke our hearts."