Coming from Asia, he was shocked at how much Americans took for granted. At school in the racially divided Boyle Heights neighbourhood, he and his friend Will Adams (later to be Will.i.am) were chased home each day by knife-wielding gangs. After he moved to LA from the Philippines aged 14, he was astonished by the mayhem and violence. I think kids have actually started to pay attention to what is happening in society." "And then we encouraged the youth to participate. "We supported him in creating that song," recalls Apl. Apparently, he knew the words to I Gotta Feeling - so we gave him the mike."Īnother famous acquaintance is President Obama, for whom the band campaigned via Will.i.am's Yes We Can single (with cameos by Scarlett Johansson, John Legend and others). We did a song for his new movie, Knight and Day. "He came to our show in Miami," recalls Apl. In London recently, they were joined on stage by Tom Cruise, who treated the audience to his marrow-chilling manic shark grin before leaping in on vocals during I Gotta Feeling. The Black Eyed Peas aren't exactly short on celebrity chums. If Apl sounds a bit underwhelmed by Cole, it's hardly a surprise. She's a very nice person - very cool and with great charisma." I was only exposed to her when we did the European tour. "I hadn't really heard of her until Will.i.am worked with her," he says, diplomatically. As Will.i.am's best friend since high school, did Apl feel somewhat of a backstage gooseberry? Indeed, Will was so taken with the Girls Aloud vocalist, he declared her his favourite person in the world to eat fried chicken with. According to insider gossip, Cheryl, recently split from husband Ashley, forged a special connection with BEP leader Will.i.am. In this part of the world, the group's fame was magnified further when they recently took Cheryl Cole on the road for their Ireland and UK tour. It's astonishing how people gravitated to it." "When we made that song we didn't know it would have the success it had. "You know what, it's pretty amazing," says the sweetly spoken, rather shy Apl (pronounced Apple), his accent still bearing the imprint of his impoverished Filipino childhood.
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They've also claimed a unique spot in the record books - single I Gotta Feeling is the first download to achieve in excess of 10 million sales worldwide. (an acronym for the Energy Never Dies) has shifted some three million copies in the US alone, an extraordinary feat at a time of tanking record sales. On first-name terms with Barack Obama, Bono and Nelson Mandela, their latest album The E.N.D.
Nowadays, the California quartet are everyone's favourite feel-good pop act. The days when The Black Eyed Peas were the scourge of the moral majority are, it's fair to say, long over. "All we were doing," he repeats, "was paying homage to a woman's anatomy." It's nothing negative." In his mansion high in Beverly Hills, the mohawked rapper (real name Allan Lindo) is discussing The Black Eyed Peas' break-out smash, My Humps, the chorus of which ("My hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps") has gone down as one of the most notorious in recent pop history. "We were just paying homage to a woman's body you know," he says. The Black Eyed Peas' Apl.de.ap laughs dryly.
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