When Will attended the 2005 MOBO Awards in London, the highlight of the evening should have been the sight of hip-hop royalty Public Enemy landing the ‘Outstanding Contribution to Black Music’ gong. The genre-defining rap icons are a band that Will has often admired, but while he was delighted to see them recognized in this way, he was not about to switch his opportunistic senses off for the evening. His mind ticking away as quickly as ever, Will glanced around the venue to see which other musical figures were ‘in the house’ for the ceremony. Suddenly, he noticed that one of his all-time heroes was present. ‘Shit,’ Will exclaimed to his bandmates, ‘it’s James Brown!’
In an era in which the stature of ‘legend’ is awarded far too easily, Brown remains richly deserving of it. His influence on the musical scene, particularly black music, is immense. His charisma is also huge and his entourage on the night was far from insubstantial. Therefore, most people were far too nervous and in awe to even consider approaching Brown for a chat.
Will, though, is not like most people. He took a deep breath, marched over to Brown’s table and introduced himself to the man he admires so much. He told the godfather of soul just how much he admires his music. Then he took the conversation to another level. ‘One day,’ Will told Brown, ‘we would love to work with you’. It was an enormously audacious pitch. A successful one, too. ‘All rigggght,’ Brown told Will. ‘We’ll make it happen.’
He was good to his word, too. Just seventy-two hours later, Brown joined The Black Eyed Peas in their studio in Chiswick, west London. The band were only given an hour’s notice of the arrival of Brown and his ten-strong entourage. Brown appeared, wearing a violet suit – described as ‘sharp-ass’ by Taboo – with a maroon shirt. With seven fellow musicians and three assistants in tow, he was every inch the superstar: in Taboo’s telling, Brown was ‘glowing’ and ‘oozing charisma’. He made the band feel like children in comparison. Brown’s first words were to remind The Black Eyed Peas that he did not normally take part in collaborations. Why? ‘I’m James Brown’. However, he said that ‘something told me I needed to work with The Black Eyed Peas, and that’s why I’m here. So let’s work!’
Meanwhile, one of Brown’s assistants gave the band a sharp reminder of Brown’s stature, after Will had made a faux pas. ‘Yo, what up, James, how you doing?’ Will had asked as Brown arrived. Brown’s assistant told Will in no uncertain terms that under the expected ‘system’ of behaviour, everyone was expected to refer to Brown only as ‘Mr Brown’. He added that the surname form should be used universally during the session, so Will should only be referred to by other people as ‘Mr I Am’, while Fergie would become, for the duration of the session, ‘Miss Ferg’. With that typically show-business system made clear, the artists went to work.
Will had created the foundations of the song he wanted Brown to work on with them. It was called ‘They Don’t Want Music’, and he was nervous as he played the track as it stood to Brown, anxious for his approval. However, Brown did approve of the song and immediately took charge of the process. He told the assembled musicians of both camps that he would tell them what to do and it would be he, and only he, who would ‘give you direction’.
The following hours proved an astonishing experience for Will, as he sat next to Brown at the mixing desk and watched his hero bark out orders. Will found it all both dizzyingly fun in its own right and enormously instructive. Brown told the musicians how to ‘feel the funk’ and make their performance perfect. Often, his orders to his own band of instrumentalists and vocalists were delivered via nothing more than a particular grunt sound, which Brown would emit and which they seemed to understand. Will watched it all with wonder.
When the ensemble moved upstairs for lunch, Will got to see Brown’s diva behaviour in its full horrendous glory. Flunkies brushed his hair for him and even cut his food for him. All in all, Brown’s visit to their studio had been one of the most astonishing experiences of Will’s life in itself – and from it came a track for their new album.
Another special guest on the album was Sting, the former lead singer of the Police. The collaboration came about due to a separate project Will had been working on with Sting. With the band already considering sampling the melody from Sting’s iconic ‘An Englishman in New York’ on one of the tracks for the album, it was eventually decided that they would invite him to sing on the track, which was called ‘Union’. While James Brown had blown the band away with his charisma and star-like behaviour, Sting impressed them with the scale of his home, to which he invited Will and the band to stay while they were in the south-west of England to perform at the Glastonbury Festival.
Lake House, in Wiltshire, is indeed a breathtaking house and Will was mesmerized the moment he arrived at the 800-acre property in Salisbury. The opulent, castle-like main building houses some fourteen bedrooms and eight bathrooms. In the grounds stands a 350-year-old tree – the presence of which was said to have convinced Sting and his wife Trudie to buy the place. Will connected well with Sting and Trudie. Together they engaged in lengthy and deep conversations about spiritual matters. Sting also took the ensemble on a trip to the nearby attraction of Stonehenge.
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The majority of the work on the new album, which was to be called Monkey Business, took place in London. The band had rented three properties in Chiswick, the one Will stayed in was a tall, narrow house in the corner of a cul-de-sac. He and the band loved the greenery of the neighbourhood and were amused by the ubiquity of pregnant women and mothers of newborn babies. It seemed to be an area of many different types of creativity – fertile ground indeed.
The band was focused and productive. As Fergie put it, they were creating a ‘waterfall’ that became ‘this huge ocean that is Monkey Business’. During the three months they worked on the album in London, that waterfall flowed well. Inspiration seemed to be everywhere: following a visit to a bhangra club in London, they recorded the Bollywood-flavoured song ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’. They also recorded in France, Brazil and Japan.
Will found he was inspired in the strangest of settings. One day they were travelling in Japan on the ‘bullet’ train, which can travel up to 180 miles per hour. He was listening to a CD of surfing rock-style tunes when one of them, a track called ‘Miserlou’, inspired him to create a new song. He fired-up his laptop and began to work on the new song, using recording software he had installed for moments such as these. As the rest of the band sat drinking sake, Will was hard at work, his creative juices flowing at top speed as the train raced through Japan. Later, on a flight, he sat and worked further on the song. When the flight arrived in Tokyo, Will took his computer to the park and recorded the vocals. This was the sort of crazy way in which the album came together.
The title of the album had a degree of playful protest to it. Over the course of several years, the band had felt that the orders that their management and record label constantly bestowed upon them had almost relegated the band to the role of performing monkeys. In a harsh assessment of the band’s place in the chain, Will would say, ‘Sing, monkey, dance, monkey, get on stage, monkey!’ But there was a secondary dimension to the simian stature they felt they had developed. As the band had been driven away from a venue one evening, so many fans had surrounded their vehicle that they felt that they were monkeys in a zoo, caged away from the visitors. Finally, the impish ways that the band adopted to get through the rigours of touring also felt, at times, like ‘monkey business’. Thus the title of the new album was representative of the band’s feelings at the time, capturing well the upsides and downsides of their growing fame. To a degree, it also signifies the long-term spirit of Will’s band, who always believed that playfulness was a crucial part of the experience both publicly and behind the scenes.
Released in May 2005, Monkey Business made for an engrossing body of work. As well as the aforementioned Brown and Sting, it had guest appearances from other stars, including Justin Timberlake. Then, of course, there was the Fergie factor. On Elephunk, she had been a debuting oddity; now she was a mainstay of the band and therefore her contribution was keenly anticipated. With Elephunk, having been received so well both critically and commercially, the band risked the sort of critical backlash that so often hovers over bands who have enjoyed the favour of the reviewers.
The critics were harsh in some quarters. A regular theme the critics noted was that this fourth studio album signified a drop in form from the band’s previous effort, Elephunk. PopMatters, for instance, sniffed: ‘If ... you’re in the market for dance music, although admittedly excellently produced, but which can’t sustain any substantial intellectual investment, then Monkey Business should be right up your alley.’ Entertainment Weekly was scarcely kinder, ranking the album ‘a bland meringue: a succession of cotton candy raps about chicks, partying, and partying with chicks, broken up by choruses destined to evaporate outside a shindig’s perimeter’. It even ranked the Brown collaboration as ‘trite’ and lacking ‘much innovation’.
Rolling Stone, meanwhile, awarded the album three stars out of five, concluding: ‘Monkey Business is just as bright if not quite as fun as Elephunk’. The BBC attacked the album’s lyrics, contending that their ‘flimsiness ... may let the album down for traditional Black Eyed Peas fans who’ve been following the group since the days of 1998’s Behind the Front’. The Guardian felt that ‘the choruses are just as catchy as those on 2003’s Elephunk,’ but added that ‘the lyrical inspiration has evaporated’, before truly putting the boot in with the conclusion that: ‘Only James Brown comes out of the wreckage of ideas and ideals with any dignity’.
Despite these harsh verdicts, the album was a commercial success: it has, at the time of writing, sold over eleven million copies worldwide. It reached the top of the album charts in eight countries, including Canada and France, and has gone triple platinum in the United States.
The album’s first single, ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’, was also a hit in America: it reached number three on the US Hot 100, and won them a Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. It was a number one in Australia, a number three in the UK and a number five in Canada. The second single from the album was ‘Don’t Lie’, which reached number fourteen in the US Hot 100, and hit number six in both the UK and Australia.
The album’s third single, however, proved to be a more contentious affair. ‘My Humps’, with its bawdy lyrics, hit number three in America. However, it was not to everyone’s taste. John Bush of AllMusic called it ‘one of the most embarrassing rap performances of the new millennium’, which must have hurt Will, if he became aware of it. Readers of the Global Gathering website named it the dance track with ‘the most ridiculous’ lyrics of all time. Rolling Stone placed it at number one on its Twenty Most Annoying Songs chart. Kelefa Sanneh, writing for The New York Times, declared that the single is ‘most likely to live in infamy’, deliberately invoking a description of the Pearl Harbor disaster of World War II. While another critic damned it as ‘so monumentally vacuous, slapped together and tossed-off that it truly tests the definition of “song”’.
Elsewhere, it was compared to Kelis’s catchy 2003 hit single ‘Milkshake’. Harsh words, yet Will himself would later dip a toe into the chorus of disapproval and distance himself from the track. ‘It wasn’t lyrical miracles,’ he told the Daily Record in 2011. ‘It got to the point where we didn’t want to play it no more. But the beat was rocking.’
As they toured the album, Will was struck by a stampede of tangible signs of how far he had come. Thanks mainly due to the stature of the band, and partly due to the changing face of music-industry finance, the tour was bankrolled by two corporate sponsors: technology giants Verizon and motor company Honda. Not only did the band now travel first-class and stay in elite hotels, they were even each given a limited edition, specially manufactured Honda Civic car. Month after month they flew first-class from country to country, from continent to continent, playing to huge venues bursting with hysterical crowds. From Hong Kong to Honolulu, Tokyo to Tel Aviv, Santiago to Shanghai, they wowed audiences. Their road crew was now a multi-team operation. Even their road manager now had a considerable team at his command: the entire operation was benefiting from the band’s success. Gwen Stefani was support act for several dates.
Perhaps the crowning evening of the Monkey Business tour came in Brazil. The band arrived at Ipanema Beach to headline a New Year’s Eve concert. They did not expect the size of the crowd that greeted them: around one million people. Given that it was one million Brazilian people – often a naturally festive bunch – and the sense of occasion that the date brought to the party, and the audience made for a breathtaking, bopping vista. At the end of the show, which Will and the band crowned with an excitable rendition of ‘Where is the Love?’, the band feared being crushed by the audience, which began to descend en masse backstage. Will and the others were bundled into ambulances, whose sirens managed to clear a way to safety for the headlining stars.
Among the purely commercial work were more philanthropic moments, foreshadowing Will’s subsequent march into such activity. While in South Africa, the band took some time out of their schedule to hold a creative event for children from deprived parts of Soweto. It was there that Will had used the example of one fourteen-year-old boy to show what was possible.
Another lad there, called Bongeni Moragelo, was like a mini-Will. As Moragelo rapped and danced, Taboo could not help but remember the Will he had first met in California, the Will who had so bossed those rapping competitions. The fire, hunger and sheer ability of the boy were astonishing. Will invited him to join them onstage in Johannesburg, a memorable moment for all concerned, particularly Moragelo. Will built a charitable sponsorship relationship with the boy, to ensure he made the most of his talents.
Also during the trip, the band met South African legend and ex-President Nelson Mandela. It was a proud day for Will, who wore a neat white suit for the occasion. He was unimpressed by Taboo’s comparative shabbiness of dress and punctuality, chiding his hung-over bandmate with a sarcastic: ‘Hey, glad you could join us’, when his still-wayward bandmate arrived.
This was an understated rebuke to a bandmate and friend who Will loves, rather than anything rougher than that. It would be easy for Will to have descended into full-blown diva behaviour at such exciting moments as huge concerts and introductions to iconic world leaders, especially after seeing how his hero James Brown had behaved in the simple surroundings of a recording studio. Yet he has largely maintained a sense of humour and balance. His demands on the road have rarely been monstrous. They mostly centre around the space and ability to continue his songwriting and creativity wherever he is.
However, one way to have him turn his nose up is to present to him a lavatory with no moist baby wipes as an option. If there is only ‘dry toilet paper’, he will not be happy. To describe why this is important, he constructs a metaphor which is best skipped by the queasy or those eating. ‘Here’s proof on why people should have baby wipes: get some chocolate, wipe it on a wooden floor, and then try to get it up with some dry towels,’ he told Elle magazine. ‘You’re going to get chocolate in the cracks. That’s why you gotta get them baby wipes.’ When he puts his case that way it is terribly difficult to argue.
Will was, at this stage, living in a fine home, in which the presence of baby wipes was just one of the luxuries. The $7m home, near Griffith Park in the Los Feliz neighbourhood, was physical testament to his success. Particularly poignant and significant was the fact that from the roof of his house, Will had a commanding view of the city, all the way to the building in which he grew up. Although the properties were nearly twenty miles apart, the symbolic distance was even greater. With a neat, terraced garden accompanying the lavish building, Will was living in some comfort. He had designed the house so he could work and record in almost any of its rooms – and beyond. ‘It’s not really a house,’ he told The Times, ‘it’s a studio. There are microphones and places I can plug in everywhere; a wireless controller, so I can record from anywhere; and I can log on from anywhere in the world, so even if I’m in London or Tokyo, I can still be making music.’
Indeed, even after purchasing this property, Will continued to sleep most evenings in a hotel, even when his itinerary did not require him to. Although the hotels he chooses are plush, including one overlooking London’s Hyde Park, he is happiest with a fairly small room. ‘I like to be cosy,’ he said. ‘I need a place to recharge.’
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After releasing his first two solo albums in fairly quick succession, Will had taken a few years out from solo releases. In 2007, the third was finally unveiled. It was originally going to be titled Keep the Beeper, but the title Will eventually settled on was Songs About Girls. Taking at face value the widespread perception that this piece of work is at least semi-autobiographical, here we get a rare glimpse into Will’s personal life. Indeed, as he explained to Billboard, it was the personal dimension of the project that encouraged him to persevere with it, when he could just as easily have scrapped the work and concentrated on his band. Instead, he ploughed on with the album ‘where all the songs could tell a story of falling in love, falling out of love, trying to get back in love, destructing love and destroying love and then starting a new situation. That journey is what makes this unique’. Rolling Stone magazine described the narrative of the album as: ‘Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy goes to strip club. Boy gets caught cheating. Girl leaves. Boy and girl somehow get back together.’
In an imaginative overall package for the album, Will recorded videos for eight of the twelve songs, creating, in his words, ‘a movie about making a movie’. Even more worthy of note was the online music player he developed to accompany the album. The music player, developed alongside technology company Musicane, enabled Will to add to the album’s track list as many times as he wished, with the fans sharing the profit. Fans could embed the player on their own websites, blogs or MySpace pages. Then, each time a visitor downloaded a song from that player, the website owner would share in Will’s profits.
‘I thought, “If I have an album filled with songs about girls, what happens if tomorrow I write another song about a girl?”’ he told The Times. ‘So something that started off just with fifteen songs, in the next ten years could have 100 songs. Having twelve songs on a record? That day is done.’ He described his media player arrangement for Songs About Girls as ‘the whole multimedia enchilada’. Fans enjoyed both snacking and feasting on the music tortilla and its contents.
The album had originally been due to include collaborations with Slick Rick, Ice Cube, Q-Tip, Common, Snoop Dogg, Too Short, Busta Rhymes and Ludacris. However, the only one that made the final version was that with Snoop Dogg, who appears on ‘The Donque Song’. In due course, Cheryl Cole would contribute backing vocals to the single release of one of the tracks.
The BBC reviewer felt that the lack of collaborators made the album a lesser thing, saying: ‘The soulless record would have benefited from Adams tapping up contributors from his extensive list of heavyweight contacts and adding some bite to its bark’. That said, the reviewer was less than impressed by the one guest appearance that did make it, describing it as: ‘Snoop Dogg’s most vacuous cameo for some time’. The Sputnikmusic reviewer was even harsher on the album. ‘There’s not even one song here that sounds good enough to be a big single,’ he wrote, declaring the record ‘an abject failure on practically every level’.
Entertainment Weekly was similarly comprehensive in its dismissal of the album as a: ‘half-assed exercise in superficiality’, while Slant Magazine attacked its ‘appallingly bad’ lyrics. AllMusic was far more impressed, awarding the album the honour of the ‘best album-length production of the year’, and declaring it ‘a tour de force of next-generation contemporary R&B’, that ‘percolates with more innovation, enthusiasm and excitement than contemporary work by Pharrell, Kanye West, Mark Ronson, or anyone else remotely in the same league’. Commercially, the album outperformed his previous solo efforts but still failed to make much of a dent in the charts. For the time being, Will’s solo adventures would be relatively disastrous commercially when compared to the mammoth success his band was increasingly enjoying.
In promoting the album, Will gave glimpses into his personal life. He described to the Guardian how he makes relationships with women work. ‘These days I’m a masseuse and a cook,’ he said. ‘Then I become a cuddler, and a spooner. I’m a conversationalist. I just like to talk – to have random conversations about odd things, like dance music and jogging. If you don’t talk about a girl’s interests, then forget it. You need to inspire them to achieve all the things they want to achieve. As well as just saying, “You look hot today”. And in a good relationship, time is nothing. You’ve got to always keep your phone on, you’ve got to get Skype, get a webcam, get MSN, get Yahoo; get ’em all. You know? So you’re always available. That’s hot.’
As well as communication, he said, he is also keen on honesty in relationships – but only from a realistic starting point: ‘And you’ve got to try your hardest not to lie. But you can’t say you’re never going to, because then you’re lying.’ Fine words, yet Will’s personal life continued to be an enigmatic affair.
With his third solo album on the shelves, albeit not moving from them with much enthusiasm, Will turned his attention back to The Black Eyed Peas. However, he also had his fingers in a splendid feast of other pies. From production to politics, Will was spreading his gaze far and wide. First, though, he had to weather an emotional storm.
Will sets the scene of how he felt at the start of 2008. ‘I was feeling depressed,’ he later told the Daily Mail. So he decided that the best way to beat his blues was to drive out to the freeway and spray some graffiti, or ‘tag’, in Will’s lingo. ‘I stopped under a bridge on Route 101 and wrote “No” in big letters using a can of black paint,’ he said. ‘I’d almost finished when two cops arrived.’ There then ensued a chase. Will was unsuccessful in his getaway plan and ended up adding physical pain to the emotional torment he was suffering. ‘I broke out running across the freeway, tripped and broke my fifth metatarsal bone,’ he said. According to the Young Hollywood website, Will’s representative refused to comment on whether there had been any further repercussions after this incident.
What he really needed was not to spray graffiti, but to find something that would reignite his fire. Such an opportunity was just around the corner.
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The election campaign that propelled Barack Obama to the White House in 2008 was one of the slickest and most innovative force fields in political history. Just as John F. Kennedy had first harnessed the power of television during his campaigning in the 1960s, so did Obama successfully grapple with a new campaigning medium: the internet.
At the centre of his online electioneering was the slogan ‘Yes We Can’, and Will directed a campaign video harnessing this slogan into a musical force. It was inspired by a speech in which the candidate moved millions of listeners – including Will himself. ‘It made me reflect on the freedoms I have, going to school where I went to school, and the people that came before Obama like Martin Luther King, presidents like Abraham Lincoln that paved the way for me,’ he told ABC News.
The video he made was imaginative and attention-grabbing. It featured Will and a few dozen other stars including Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Scherzinger, Adam Rodriguez, Amber Valetta and Nick Cannon, speaking and singing along to a video of Obama’s benchmark speech. Will had teamed up with Jesse Dylan, the filmmaker son of Bob Dylan, to direct the ambitious project. Over forty-eight hours, they invited the galaxy of stars to pass through their studio and film their contributions to the campaigning collage. ‘I’m blown away by how many people wanted to come and be a part of it in a short amount of time,’ said Will when the project ended. ‘It was all out of love and hope for change and really representing America and looking at the world.’
The video, clocking in at a little over four minutes long, is shot in basic black-and-white, and its sparse and simple feel adds to the ‘community’ feel of the work. However, this on-the-surface modesty belies the slickness and thoughtfulness that went into its making. It premiered on ABC News in February 2008. However, as had always been the intention, the video’s true impact and influence was felt online, after it was uploaded onto the YouTube network and shared on Obama campaign websites. The online onslaught began on the campaign’s ‘Super Tuesday’. It became a truly viral effort and has now been watched over twenty-six million times. In August, Will performed the song live at an Obama campaign convention in Colorado, where his energetic performance whipped the crowd into quite a frenzy.
By this stage, the overall campaign was gathering such momentum that an Obama victory began to seem inevitable. Will’s part in that campaign was significant: it was to a large degree thanks to this video that the ‘Yes We Can’ slogan became so well known worldwide. However, the video was not without its critics. A Wall Street Journal writer described it as ‘deeply creepy’, dismissing its stars as people who ‘appear to be in some sort of trance’, before concluding ‘the whole thing has the feel of a cult of personality’. Other critics, including ostensible supporters of Obama, claimed to be ‘weirded out’ by it all.
None of these criticisms stood in the way of the video’s momentum, however. It won an Emmy award for ‘Best New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment’, with the panel praising its ‘passion and inspiration’. Will’s fellow executive producer of the video, Fred Goldring, said: ‘We are thrilled and honored to have received a prestigious Emmy Award, particularly in a brand-new category which acknowledges the ever-increasing impact of the convergence of digital content and delivery’.
In the same week as that announcement, Will was crowned ‘Artist of the Year’ at the Webby Awards. His acceptance speech was just five-words long: ‘Now we know we can’.
So, what did Will hope an Obama victory would bring with it? Another Obama slogan was ‘Change we can believe in’. As for Will, the change that he said he wanted Obama to bring to America, should he be elected, included: ‘Education, America’s finance, getting our dollar back to where it should be, stopping the war, health and international policies.’ As his political clout increased, somewhat surreally, Will even appeared as a hologram on CNN News to discuss the election.
As a result of the frenzy of expectation that had been built around him, Barack Obama entered the White House with considerable pressure on his relatively young shoulders. A significant number of his most vocal supporters would subsequently feel disappointment during the President’s first term. Will would have some issues with President Obama, too, but his pride at having played such an influential part in the election of the President of what many still consider the planet’s most powerful country was, rightly, undiminished. Will received generous thanks from Obama, who told him his video had made a significant difference to the campaign. ‘The President has thanked me tons of times since,’ Will said. ‘He told me I reached a demographic that had been, up to that point, invisible.’
In his journey on the political carousel, Will has striven to remain sincere. Mindful of how empty and insincere are the political or social gestures of many stars, he has tried to eschew such vanity. ‘If I go out and say, “Yes We Can! We can, Obama! I support Obama!” And then I’m out, going, “Woohoo, I’m not even living in America, I’m in Spain!” How is that supporting? Because I go to a freaking fundraiser and give him some money sometimes?’
Will has stated that he wishes more people would notice how little control we have over what happens in the world. ‘We’re not in control,’ he told the Independent. ‘We have no control over the outcome of anything. Like the planet and global warming, we don’t control that. If politicians want a war, we don’t control that. Acts of terrorism, we can’t control them.’ In another moment of cynicism, he said: ‘Politics are about preserving relationships at the end of the day, and it has nothing to do with the greater good for humanity. It’s just all about business.’
The final word on his association with Obama to date can only be a brief recounting of a highly embarrassing moment Will had while performing at the President’s inauguration. Of all the memories of the experience that Will expected to take away with him on the day, the one he had not bargained for was that he would break wind in front of the President. ‘I’d been eating all sorts of rubbish and my insides were in a mess,’ he explained to the Daily Mail. ‘I wasn’t healthy like I am now. I was playing on stage and I just couldn’t help myself.’ The audacity of wind, indeed. Nowadays, he does indeed eat carefully and healthily, including the hellish-tasting yet supremely effective ‘superfood’ of kale juice. (He might not be entirely out of the woods, though, as kale is notorious for producing supremely blustery conditions down south.)
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Meanwhile, his stature as a producer for other artists was soaring. Having taken production duties on releases from The Black Eyed Peas and his own solo ventures, Will had learned a great deal about the craft. His technical knowledge and ability, together with his mesmeric persona, combined to make him quite a prospect. Over the years, Will has worked with several of the music industry’s biggest names, including some he personally has admired for several years. His talent, stature and energy have combined to make him an attractive prospect for other artists. From 2004, his name appeared on the production credits of material by a wide variety of artists, including Carlos Santana, the Pussycat Dolls, Ricky Martin and Earth, Wind & Fire. He also worked for Diddy, Nas and Justin Timberlake during these restless years.
To date, the pinnacle of such experiences came in 2006, when he was invited to work with Michael Jackson. He spent a large part of the year working with Jackson in Ireland. For Will, to work with ‘the biggest inspiration’ of his life, the man who ‘defined me, and my dreams’ was a blissful honour. It hardly felt like work at all.
This was not the first time his career had crossed paths with Jackson’s, but never before had it done so on such a scale. He could have looked back to when he first walked into the offices of Epic Records in the 1990s. At that time, even to be in the same building as the label that owned Jackson’s music seemed to be honour enough. So, when he was first told that Michael Jackson was on the phone, wanting to speak about their working together, Will assumed it was somebody playing a practical joke. Now, working alongside Jackson in the studio day after day, ‘felt like a dream’ to Will. For Jackson said he chose Will to work with because he felt he was making ‘wonderful, innovative, positive, great music’ and therefore was curious to see ‘how the chemistry would work’.
It made for a surreal experience for Will at times: ‘You’re there in Ireland. It’s green hills. It’s Michael Jackson. You’re in the cottage making beats, dance beats. He’s like dancing and sh*t.’ His nerves could be forgiven. Naturally, there were many such moments of eccentricity. One morning, Jackson suggested Will ride a horse out to the fields. ‘Why don’t you go pick some apples?’ Jackson asked him. ‘Take the horses, they’re lovely, they’re wonderful. They know exactly where the juicy apples are!’
Will took up the challenge and, for the first time in his life, got on a horse. Jackson had advised Will that if he noticed the horse trying to grab an apple that he should ‘grab it before he does – because that will be the juiciest apple’. Will decided that the best policy would be to share the juicy apples with the horse: each time the horse went to grab one with its mouth, Will would let it have that one, and take a neighbouring apple himself. This seemed the best compromise with a beast that had the potential to throw him off.
Work continued on the album in surroundings that Jackson had become very fond of. He had found Ireland a haven from the media frenzy that perpetually surrounded him and he had worked at the studio in County Westmeath before. And it certainly suited Will to work with Jackson in serene surroundings.
The tracks they were working on were supposed to form a comeback album for Jackson. It was to be a dance album, full of the life that was, unbeknown to them both, soon to leave Jackson for good. The material they were working on was, said Will later, of a high standard. ‘It was going to be out of this world,’ he told the Mirror. ‘It’s something Michael has never done before – a dance music album. I was very proud of it.’ Will noted, with somewhat amused approval, how serious Jackson was about his work. ‘But he was very protective and kept it under lock and key. After we made it I had to hand back every demo. He was a perfectionist and didn’t want anyone to hear it until it was ready.’
Will also noticed Jackson’s perfectionism when the singer visited him at his house. There, he watched as Jackson spent three hours fine-tuning his voice, just in order to sing for five minutes. Will was impressed. ‘He’s laying and his feet are up on the chair, he’s kicking his feet,’ he said. ‘I’m like, dude, Michael Jackson’s laying on my floor. Michael Jackson’s laying on my floor. He’s testing his voice and three hours has passed.’ Will was astonished but approving. Jackson told him: ‘I just love, you know, this is all we have is flesh and bones. That’s it. It’s just flesh. That’s all we got. I want to protect it and take care of it, because this is my voice. This is my thing.’
Will emerged from his association with Jackson replete with several cracking anecdotes, which he has related with aplomb. One involved some contact he had with the King of Pop while they were both staying in Las Vegas. Jackson phoned Will to let him know he was in town. Will mentioned that The Black Eyed Peas were playing a concert that evening, and invited Jackson along. Initially, Jackson was excited, but when Will told him the band’s stage time was 9 p.m., Jackson said: ‘Oh, rats, I can’t. I’ve got to put the kids to sleep.’ Will was charmed and amused by Jackson’s use of the word ‘rats’.
He issued Jackson with another invitation, telling him he was also due to appear onstage with Prince later in the evening, and asking if he would like to watch. ‘Oh really? I’d love to. Call Prince and see if it’s cool,’ replied Jackson. Will could hardly believe what was happening, as he phoned Prince’s team to ask them whether it was OK if Michael Jackson watched him perform alongside Prince. Naturally, the answer was affirmative.
He ended up running late for the performance, and worried he might miss it all together. He could hardly believe the day he was having. ‘So, I’m late, I’m late,’ he told CraveOnline. ‘I’m in the cab, like aw, man, what a time to be f*ckin’ late. I’m always late and I’m late for Michael Jackson to see me perform with Prince. So I hop off the cab and I’m running in Las Vegas.’ As he ran down the road, towards the Palms venue, people recognized him – almost. ‘I’m running and people are like, “Wyclef!” I’m like, “F*ck you”, right? Then I run and I get to the place and I perform for Prince and I walk off stage and Michael’s there. He’s like, “That was awesome!”’ A proud, and bizarre, moment for sure. ‘Yeah, but that was a great experience to have Mike see me perform with Prince. It was nuts. That’s great, cool.’
On 25 June 2009, Michael Jackson died. Will was shocked and devastated when he learned the news while in Paris. The band had just performed and were letting their hair down at the VIP Room nightclub, a short distance from the Champs-Elysées. Will was DJing and, in a less busy moment, picked up his phone to check for messages. To his horror, one of the messages he found told him that Jackson had died. Given that there had been rumours in the past of Jackson dying, he hoped this would turn out to be another hoax. Sadly, after checking with Quincy Jones, he discovered that this time the superstar really had passed away.
At this stage, Will could have lived by the motto of ‘the show must go on’. Instead, he brought the ‘show’ to a crashing conclusion. He cut dead the music and announced over the microphone the news he had just had confirmed to him. The festive atmosphere disappeared in an instant, and tears were shed – some of them from Will’s eyes.
Will had spoken to Jackson just four days before, he later revealed. ‘He called me to wish me happy Father’s Day even though I don’t have any children. He said, “I just wanted to call and say have a good day anyway.” I told him, “OK, I will grab my crotch and wish myself happy Father’s Day for all my unborn children.” He laughed and said, “You’re so funny.”’
In fact, Jackson’s gesture touched Will deeply. He realized that, for fatherless Will, Father’s Day could be an emotional challenge. The call was Jackson’s thoughtful way of reaching out. Will had attempted to contact him around the same time, but found that Jackson was forever busy. His last contact, albeit indirectly, with Jackson had been just days before his death, when, while Will was djing at a club in Wandsworth, south-west London, one of Jackson’s choreographers approached him. ‘He came over and told me Michael wanted to get the Peas to open his gigs at the O2,’ said Will in Billboard magazine. ‘Man, that would have been so amazing. Imagine us together on stage. Awesome.’ Instead, fate intervened. ‘It’s so sad,’ said Will, reflecting on Jackson’s death. ‘He was my friend and the biggest inspiration of my life. I’m going to miss him.’
Before long, he felt he had to go to war on behalf of his friend and inspiration. In 2010, a posthumous album of Jackson tracks was released. Will was utterly horrified. He first spoke out in August, as publicity for the album, Michael, began. ‘How you gonna release Michael Jackson when Michael Jackson ain’t here to bless it?’ he asked, rhetorically, in the NME. After the album’s producer said that he was following Jackson’s ‘notes and plans’, the row rolled on.
Several parties made conflicting claims to understand and be serving Jackson’s wishes. The man himself was unable to clear matters up, so Will did his best to honour his friend’s wishes. As part of this process, he related a conversation the two had about a leaked song. ‘A couple of months before Michael died he called me on the phone really upset,’ he said. ‘[Jackson said] “Hey, it’s Michael, somebody leaked one of these songs.” And I said, “What song, Mike?” And he said, “Some song called ‘Hold My Hand’.” I swear to God, I had this conversation with him.’ Having been hit by leaked tracks himself, Will could empathize with Jackson’s feelings.
As for Michael, Will was forthright in his assessment of its release. ‘Whoever put it out and is profiting off of it, I want to see how cold they are,’ he told the Sun. ‘To say that what [Jackson] contributed during his life wasn’t enough. He just wasn’t any ordinary artist. He was a hands-on person. To me it’s disrespectful. Michael Jackson songs are finished when Michael says they’re finished.’ Akon, the artist who collaborated with Jackson on the song that became the posthumous single ‘Hold My Hand’, hit back, saying: ‘I think that’s probably Will’s opinion. Me personally, I think that’s keeping his legacy alive. I don’t see anything disrespectful about it. He got his people taking care of it. We all did records that we actually worked on together on the album. These records would have come out whether he was alive or dead, so I think this actually helps to keep his legacy alive. I honestly disagree with that.’
Will remained robust in his position, saying he would only change his mind about posthumous releases if Jackson’s mother were to contact him and say the plans had her blessing. Until such a point, any releases of unfinished Jackson material would only be made, said Will, by ‘freaking parasites!’.
Putting the tragedy of Jackson’s death and the subsequent controversy to one side, it had been an immense experience for Will to work with him. Nothing could change that. So much more could have come of their working relationship, had Jackson not died. Will says he was on the brink of setting up a duet between Jackson and Cheryl Cole. ‘I told Michael Cheryl was the hottest thing in the UK and he was keen to meet her,’ he told the People. ‘I was gonna write them a song.’
For Will, Jackson will never be bettered commercially. ‘He holds the highest amount of records that you could sell – no one’s ever going to sell that amount of records,’ he said. ‘Why? Because there are no more record stores. So you’re never going to beat his records. Never, ever, ever in the history of records in life.’ His deep respect for Jackson partially explains why Will refused to accept any expenses from Jackson for the time he spent working with him in the studio. The remainder of the explanation is that Will had grown appalled by the tales of ‘hangers-on’ taking advantage of Jackson and his wealth.
‘A week before the trip, he was like, “My manager is gonna call you to make sure all the travel stuff [is taken care of]”,’ Will told Starpulse. ‘[He asked me] “Do you fly commercial or private?” I was like, “Don’t worry about my flights; I’ll pay for my flights ... So many people have taken advantage of you in the past ... it will be my honour to take myself there and let’s just make music to make music. You don’t pay for my flight, I won’t charge you my fees and if we make good music then the song will make [me] money.” He’s had a history of people just taking advantage of his success and camping out in the studio and charging him outrageous rates.’
The exploitation continues to this day: in March 2012, Jackson’s entire back catalogue, including the tracks he collaborated on with Will, were stolen from Sony by online hackers. It was a posthumous reminder of the sort of trends that Jackson had talked to Will about when, remembered Will, Jackson told him ‘how cruel people can be’. Will has also spoken of how cruel he felt the media was to Jackson. While Will has never made a clear statement on his feelings over the sexual-abuse allegations that haunted Jackson, he has spoken of the unfair level of ‘scrutiny’ his friend and idol had to face during his life.
One is left with a sense of lost opportunity. Jackson came across as an increasingly spent force in the latter years of his life. Both creatively and personally he seemed to be in the depths of the doldrums. Yet there was no doubting his talent and potential. A key element he lacked in his life was the presence of a sincere, gifted and enthusiastic backer. He did get one, in the form of Will, but sadly it was too late. One can only speculate as to what the two men could have created together had there been more time.
‘Something needs to put a jolt back in the music industry,’ said Will, interviewed in Access Hollywood alongside Jackson in 2006. ‘The only person that can put that jolt back in it, that monstrosity of entertainment and music is the one that created it.’ By that, he meant Jackson. During the same interview, Jackson was asked whether he wanted his comeback to be a gradual, tentative affair, or something bigger than that. The King of Pop seemed uncertain how to answer, his lack of confidence clearly on show. ‘I can answer that as a fan,’ said Will, intervening. ‘Big’. In retrospective it’s a chilling moment, underlining what Will could have offered the wayward superstar.
How to sum up what an icon Jackson had been to Will? In an emotional video blog in 2012, he put into context what Jackson had meant to him, as he grew up. ‘When you’re in the ghetto surrounded by crime and violence,’ said Will his eyes welling up as he searched for the right words. ‘You gave me escape. I escaped from all the drama around me, listening to your music. Thank you, Michael Jackson. Thank you for your dedication, thank you for your music, thank you for the dreams. I used to wanna dance like you. I used to draw pictures of you.’ Describing Jackson as ‘the king of the industry’, he declared that ‘there will never be another artist who will impact the industry the way you have’.
Will has, though, worked with other musical icons, including pop princess Britney Spears, on her seventh album, Femme Fatale. ‘I just came from the studio right now,’ he told Associated Press, following one of their sessions. ‘It’s a monster. It’s mean, pretty, edgy, next level. But the beat just ... It’s that beat. She’s singing fresh over it. It’s something that today needs.’
In a separate interview, with Extra, he elaborated. ‘It’s mean, but a nice mean. It’s hard, but melodic. It’s aggressive, but smooth. It’s the next level, but today. She’s a sweetheart. We made music and that’s what I like. When you’re doing things because you just love it, without the, ya know, “we need a single” pressure, when you’re just in there having fun, that’s what I love.’
His boyish enthusiasm shines through afresh in his words. One senses that, to a large extent, it is when producing for other artists that Will is at his happiest. The innocence he feels in such scenarios is robbed from him when working with his own band, with all the added pressure that entails.
He has also entered that bubble of innocence with Irish rock icons U2. He felt too nervous and in awe of them to suggest one of his songs for them to record. Instead, he said, he stuck to production duties. ‘I recorded for a month with U2. Even though I worked with Michael Jackson, their U2-ness intimidated me,’ he told NME magazine. Indeed, Will has been accused of borrowing the melody for ‘I Gotta Feeling’ from the U2 track ‘I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight’.
Jimmy Iovine has pointed out that there is a connection between the tracks, but only in the sense of inspiration. ‘I sent will.i.am over to the studio to do some remixes on “I’ll Go Crazy”,’ he told the Sun. ‘He works on them for two weeks, comes back and writes “I Gotta Feeling”.’ Iovine added: ‘The chords are U2 chords, 100 per cent. Will even told them.’
Will’s excitement at working with rock gods U2 might surprise some. However, his musical tastes are far broader than casual perusal might suggest. Furthermore, Will was inspired by the band’s longevity as much as anything. Formed in 1976, the Irish band has dominated the music scene since they first enjoyed chart success in the mid-1980s. ‘I look at U2 and think, “Wow, I hope our group can stay together that long and still make brilliant music”,’ Will told the Sun. ‘And just being around Bono and the guys is inspiring. It’s like how a government should be. Bono for president of the world, I say.’
When The Black Eyed Peas had toured with U2, they had been impressed by how down to earth the Irish front man was. In sharp contrast with their experience with the Rolling Stones a few years earlier, the two bands had mingled happily backstage. In his autobiography, Taboo writes that the most contact they had was a brief ‘Hi, guys’, from the Stones, before going their separate ways. There were no hard feelings from Will and his band over this – Will would later work with Mick Jagger – but the open and friendly Bono certainly made a refreshing change.
It is little wonder that Will so admires the energetic Bono: the tireless way in which Will himself approaches life is remarkable. Observed from afar it would be hard to believe that here was a man already a multimillionaire. Although the royalties from his Black Eyed Peas material were rolling in, he continued to work with the ferocity and energy of a man struggling to keep his financial head above water. No amount of money, it seemed, could satisfy his hunger, not least because Will has never been motivated by purely financial dreams. Rather, it is the satisfaction of creativity and positivity that so drive him.
His fortune was about to be added to dramatically, though, as the band released a song that would dwarf even the iconic ‘Where is the Love?’.