Saturday, 27 April 2013

Will.I.Am - #willpower - Review


The hash tag directs the mind back to the Olympic torch procession, when will.i.am managed to fire off a string of tweets while carrying the flame through Taunton. That self-serving attitude also attends the Black Eyed Pea's first solo album since 2007. 

He's written 18 joylessly competent club tracks, roped in pals including Lil' Wayne, Nicole Scherzinger and Justin Bieber, and contrived some mutually beneficial hookups with newer artists (watch his stock rise in Asia as a result of association with South Korean girl-band 2NE1 adding a naughty rap to the dopey banger Getting Dumb – which, by the way, is the freshest moment on the record). The result: an album that should keep him in the charts while he's busy as a judge on The Voice – but only because of those guests (incidentally, on #thatPOWER Bieber reveals surprisingly decent pop-soul pipes). 

The songs featuring him alone may be full of undeniably funny arrogance ("Hey y'all, I'm the fucking nerd/ I'm about to ball real big, Mark Zuckerberg"), but they're also laden with recycled beats and Auto-Tune.

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