Black Eyed Peas - rise of the beat freaks

Taboo (left), Apl.De.Ap, Fergie and Will.I.Am love performing but for Taboo touring is also a chance to buy more shoes.

Let's hope the shoe stores in New Zealand are ready for the Black Eyed Peas. It's not Fergie, the sole girl in the LA hip-hop group, that they have to worry about either. It's Taboo, the rapper, break dancer, and shoe junkie.

"I'm a shoe consumer. I love shoes," he proclaims, after confessing to owning more than 700 pairs.

That rivals J.Lo, surely?

"I buy them every place I go, and on this tour - so far, in Canada - I've bought 12 pairs. I'm very guilty of spending my hard-earned cash on shoes. I'll buy some in New Zealand. I've been like that since I was a kid."

He wants to open a shoe store, too. "I don't want to have to buy them, I just want to look at them," he laughs. But the shoe shop may have to wait until later in life since he's got the Peas to think of, plus he's just scored his first acting role in a movie called Dirty with Cuba Gooding jnr, he's releasing a Spanish language album, and he's setting up a community centre in his home neighbourhood of Rosemead.

That community centre is something he is proud of. As he says: "I am a voice of my community so why not give something back."

Then again, Taboo can do that sort of thing now. His band of beat freaks made up of singer Fergie, and fellow rappers and break dancers, Will.I.Am and Apl.De.Ap, are huge. In New Zealand their latest album, Monkey Business, has sold more than 30,000 copies and it is equally as popular in the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

And, thanks to Monkey Business, they're selling out stadiums in Canada and the US, which, up until recently, were countries they were not so big in.

"You know, when we started out it was in little clubs, now we've gotten to the level where we feel the hard work and determination that started in '98 with our first album [Behind The Front] is paying off.

"Elephunk [from 2003] was the hard work. Working three shows a day, opening for people, then after Elephunk we moved straight into Monkey Business which was a phenomenon. They didn't expect Elephunk to do as well as it did, and the way Monkey Business is going, it's going to surpass everything that Elephunk did."

But, unlike many US artists, their homeland isn't their main focus.

"Americans are kinda stuck up," he says. "You go to a show and you see cats in the audience hating it, with their arms crossed. Our music is not just for the States, our thing is worldly. We're not really concerned about whether we go platinum in the States. We're concerned about going to places like New Zealand where people are so beautiful and open-minded about our music."

It all started for the Black Eyed Peas when they were 16-year-old kids in high school and they had a record deal with a gangsta rap label called Ruthless Records run by Eazy E, a member of notorious hip-hop outfit, NWA.

"Remember gangstas?" asks Taboo staunchly, thinking back to when he was growing up with his band mates. "We were little kids. That's all I can say about that. That was a learning experience because we didn't know about business. That was the thing, we just wanted to rap and freestyle and battle fools. We just wanted to battle, that was our thing."

In fact, Taboo says, they were Eazy E's amusement, and he would order them to break dance and freestyle for him. "He couldn't do it, because Eazy E was a gangsta. So he looked at us for entertainment, like, 'Man, these are weird niggers, with dreadlocks and funky clothes and crazy assed beats'. But he did teach us a lot about knowing business. Even though he had that [gangsta] persona he was a businessman. And he made a lot of money for that label."

Although Taboo is a bit of a braggart - actually, it is fair to say he's full of himself - the thing about Black Eyed Peas is that they have not let their success go to their heads. That's because they have worked to get to where they are now and it is a work ethic they learned as youngsters.

"While everyone was going out to parties we were practising. God intended us to have that work ethic way before we even knew we were going to be on stage, or knew what we were going to be receiving.

"And don't let nothing get to your head, if that shit gets to your head that shit could easily be deflated. Don't get a balloon head because it could easily be popped."

Although they love performing, the mundane touring schedule is enough to keep the Peas grounded, reckons Taboo. He laughs: "I'll tell you what I do everyday. Like now, it's 4.48pm, in Alberta Canada, this is how my day goes. We perform at exactly 9.30 at night, get off the stage at about 10.40pm, then there's the after party at every city. We're at the after party until like 2am. Then we get on the tour bus, drive for about six hours until we get to the next city, get to the hotel, lay down for a couple of hours, do phoners, and my whole day starts all over again."

It's a tough life being in one of the biggest bands on the planet. But at least there's no bus involved during their New Zealand tour so there's plenty of time for shoe shopping.

*Where & when: Supertop, Ericsson Stadium, tomorrow night

*Albums: Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business; John Legend - Get Lifted