Rapper, musician, producer, actor, fashion icon, Will.I.Am has been dominating the airwaves ever since the Black Eyed Peas first exploded onto the scene well over twenty years ago. After 35 million records sold, and 120 million singles, you’d be pressed to find a single nightclub in the entire world that doesn’t erupt like a choreographed karaoke set when one of his hits come on. Having just turned 50 years old, the Los Angeles-based renaissance man takes the time to share a few things
I ’m never satisfied. When I first started having real success, I realised that whatever I was hunting for never seemed to quench my thirst. I knew then that I would always need to keep chasing new things.
I’ve had the same people around me since day one, and they keep me grounded. Fame can change you, so even though you have to expand, you have to be very selective of who you pick as your ‘all-the-timers’. You have to muster your cluster.
It’s not always about money. Sony records offered The Black Eyed Peas a million dollars; Interscope offered us $450,000. But there was something about Jimmy Iovine that just felt right. We ended up being with Interscope for our entire career, which then allowed us to be a part of ‘Beats with Jimmy and Dr. Dre’, which later sold to Apple. So had I taken the million dollars from the start, I never would’ve had the opportunity to be a part of what came later.
What I’m doing right now with Mercedes is one of the most surreal moments of my life. We used to rap about Mercedes. The rappers I looked up to rapped about Mercedes. “Me and Lorenzo rollin’ in a Benzo,” you know what I mean? Eric B & Rakim posing in front of a Mercedes. The songs we all rapped about would wind up on the radio. Now we’ve transformed radio, and the first vehicle that launches it is Mercedes, and I’m a part of it. Like, what? Crazy.
The albums that made a serious impact on me were Boogiedown Productions’ Edutainment; A Tribe Called Quest’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm and Low End Theory; and De La Soul’s De La Soul is Dead. Those hit me like: ‘This is what I want to do with my life, mom! I don’t want to go to school, they’re not teaching me what I need. This is my passion, okay?’ You know what rhymes with passion? Ass-whoopin’. Okay, they don’t really rhyme, but that’s what I got.
I never liked going to concerts. My ex-girlfriend bought me tickets to see A Tribe Called Quest when I turned 21, but I refused to go. She was like ‘what?’ I told her that I’m not supposed to see concerts from the audience, I’m supposed to be up there with them. So the first time I did see Tribe Called Quest was up there on the side of the stage, because we’d opened for them. That’s the way I always knew it had to be.
I like to call things ‘pre-ja vu’ instead of deja vu—it’s not something that has already happened, but rather something that is supposed to happen. Things that have already been written, but nobody knows it yet but me.
My favourite movie is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The OG one, from the 1970s with Gene Wilder.
The things that I’ll be remembered for, I haven’t even done yet. Give me five years and I’ll have completed my final, grand stunt.
Always trust your gut.
