Black Eyed Peas - Elephunk: Album Review

Black Eyed Peas, Elephunk (A&M, 2003)
What the fuck happened here? I had written this huge this huge 39-page introduction to this shit the other day, but it had gotten even a bit more Neil Cumpston than my usual bullshit. So much so in fact that I didn't even think it would be kosher to publish since it would reveal way too much about me and my distate with certain elements in our society. Suffice it to say that this album is bad. Exactly how bad is it? Peter Wolf from the J. Geils Band (not to be confused with the Peter Wolf who wrote "We Built This City") heard it and is on record as saying "Man, these fuckers have no taste at all!" On the other hand, Jay-Z keeps a copy of this in the CD changer of his Maybach sandwiched between John Mayer and Jason Mraz, so maybe he's right and we're all just wrong. I'll leave that up to you to decide. On a more or less unrelated note: You know what the best song ever is? "100 Years" by Five for Fighting. It used to be "Walking in Memphis" by that Marc Cohn guy, but now it ain't no more.

HANDS UP

OK everybody, hands up if you think this is going to be a gay CD. [Everybody w/in earshot throws their hands up, they know what's up]. This CD has a pretty slick, professional sounding production--they actutally brought in the suriving members of Toto to play the backing tracks--but that's about the only thing this album has going for it. At all.

LABOR DAY (IT'S A HOLIDAY)

How in the world they managed to combine P.E.'s "Night of the Living Baseheads" and Madonna's "Holiday" (seriously) and make it this gay is beyond me. And that's really the amazing thing about this album, they constantly manage to find new ways to create the gayest shit you've ever heard in your life, unlike, say Fabolous, who keeps doing it the same way over and over again.

LET'S GET RETARDED

Don't they know it's not PC to say the word "retarded" anymore? It offends retarded people. Actually, it probably doesn't b/c they're retarded and thus incapable of being offended, but I bet if you played this album for them they'd probably start crying or taking a shit in their hands and throwing it at you like monkeys or something like that.

HEY MAMA

The worst song of all times, in a special extended mix version. That Nickelodeon chick should just quit and be in pornos or something.

SHUT UP

This shit is currently in commercials for XM Satellite radio. It's epic in its badness. If I heard this while I was tripping, I'd probably be tempted to claw my eyeballs out or some shit. Truly evil music.

SMELLS LIKE FUNK

Ooh, it sounds like one of the other guys in the group rhymes on this one. He ain't no good neither. The chorus on a lot of these songs sound like they were purposely dumbed down so as to appeal to people who don't speak English well. Remember, Chinese people buy satellite radios too.

LATIN GIRLS

What could've been the title to one hell of a Too $hort song instead becomes this faggoty bullshit. I'm surprised the angry black woman brigade hasn't caught wind of this shit. How come there ain't no songs on here called "African Girls?" It's bad enough there aren't any good black men left except AIDS-infected bisexual ones.

SEXY

Notice how the titles to these songs are all generic-sounding and shit. I don't even know if you can chalk this one up to attempting to sell satellite radios to the Chinese. They just weren't trying that hard.

FLY AWAY

I'm pretty sure there was also a song on that Kanye West album called "Fly Away" that wasn't any good either. Lesson: Don't have any songs on your album called "Fly Away" unless your name is Nelly Furtado or some shit.

THE BOOGIE THAT BE

The boogie that shouldn't have been.

THE APL SONG

OMG, I swear this was just a Nappy Roots song. Rip-off alert! Rip-off alert! Also, whoever it is who's rapping on this is officially the worst rapper of all time. Magoo has hereby been relieved of his position.

ANXIETY (FEAT. PAPA ROACH)

OK, I take back what I said before about "Hey Mama" being the worst song ever. It's a tie now. One of them may actually be worse than the other, but we don't really have the equipment to measure. It's a statistical dead heat.

WHERE IS THE LOVE (FEAT. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE)

No, where is the stop button? I've had enough of this shit.

OK, I'm just looking back over this and realizing this wasn't a very good album review at all. I think what it comes down to is, I'm just not good enough of a writer to describe how bad this album is. So instead I'll just suggest this: Try to vizualize the worst possible thing that could happen and then imagine if that was an album. If you can't think of anything, swing over to Rotten.com and try to find something there. Go get that new Hoobastank album and imagine if it was even a little bit worse. That's how bad this album is.