Carl Beech just bought me the latest Black Eyed Pea’s CD–The E-N-D–for my birthday. I must have said I like their music. They must be the best selling hip hop band in the world\u2014amazing music\/beat\/words\/electronic effects. Some of their lyrics are so cool and witty:–\u2018I\u2019m so 2008, you\u2019re so two thousand and late.\u2019 I suppose, as a Christian, I can\u2019t \u2018recommend\u2019 it. It\u2019s full, obviously, of the values of the World but that\u2019s where we have to live, and it has a smattering of strong language, but less than a lot of blokes hear all day at work. But it\u2019s very interesting, the overall effect of the things they say.<\/p>\n
One or two tracks (\u2018Alive\u2019 and \u2018Missing You\u2019) are content-wise essentially ballads where people talk about love and somebody basically says \u2018you\u2018re everything to me\u2019 (not just a collection of humps and lady lumps, like in one of their previous hits). This at least suggests there\u2019s supposed to be something in love, as well as lady lumps.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s \u2018Meet Me Halfway\u2019 where the girl says in effect \u2018you\u2019re everything to me, but there\u2019s a problem, and I can only meet you halfway\u2019. That seems a bit of a contradiction but sums up the mental double take in a lot of our relationships.<\/p>\n
But a lot of their stuff seems openly and honestly just materialistic, just sensual and in some cases, apparently self-obsessed. They rap and sing about rapping and singing (\u2018Boom Boom Pow\u2019 and \u2018Electric City\u2019) and their own performance (\u2018Showdown\u2019).Is this the musical performance equivalent of disappearing up your own exhaust pipe?<\/p>\n
They rap and sing about partyin\u2019 all the time (\u2018Party All the Time\u2019–what else?), money and fame (\u2018Imma Be\u2019) and, not love but sexuality without love (\u2018Ring-A-Ling\u2019, with the line, \u2018if you don\u2019t want sex with me, then why you keep textin\u2019 me?\u2019) and then about getting everything straight away (\u2018Now Generation\u2019).<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all so laid blatantly out on the table, I thought maybe they\u2019re being tongue in cheek and really saying how empty all this is–but then I don\u2019t really think they are.<\/p>\n
Then, there\u2019s an idealistic track (\u2018One Tribe\u2019), about how everybody should forget their differences and \u2018all the evil that they feed yer\u2019– implying racism, and, although they don\u2019t say it, for most people, probably religion; and all live together in harmony as one people. Now why didn\u2019t anybody think of that before? In the immortal words of the meerkat–seemples! Not.<\/p>\n
And on the CD insert where they list hundreds of people to thank, two of the band put \u2018God\u2019 at the top.<\/p>\n
But how does this all hang together? How can you say somebody is everything to you but only be prepared to meet them halfway? How can the \u2018now generation\u2019 who want everything for themselves now, ever hope to become \u2018one people\u2019. Only One Person is able to do that for people. And if they become one people, how can people who want to party all the time have a cat\u2019s chance in hell of defeating the evil in this world? And which God are they thanking?<\/p>\n
Am I taking this too seriously? But if it\u2019s meant to hang together, surely it doesn\u2019t? If they really believe in the \u2018one people\u2019 track, they\u2019re sincere but aren\u2019t they na\u00efve? If they don\u2019t, but they still perform it, isn\u2019t it just cynical commercial marketing?<\/p>\n
But if all this isn\u2019t just empty, cynical words for a thoughtless audience\u2019s empty entertainment, then it\u2019s a fantastic statement of the spirit of the age–a desperate, tragic search in the middle of total cultural confusion–lostness. The most interesting bit of all for me, the most authentic voice, comes in \u2018One People\u2019 where he says, \u2018Lord help me out \u2018cause I\u2019m tryin\u2019 ter figure out what it\u2019s all about\u2019, and it sounds as though he means it.<\/p>\n
But what great music! Think of how much more powerful and full a message the Good News about Jesus is and think what the impact would be if there were Christian hip hop bands who could tell it like the Black Eyed Peas. Anybody out there? Let me know.<\/p>\n