YMMV / The Black Eyed Peas

• Base-Breaking Member: Fergie. You either love her for being a Shameless Fanservice Girl and/or helping bring the Peas to stardom, or hate her for starting their Audience-Alienating Era and being just another part of their selling-out phase.
• Broken Base: Did the Peas Sell-Out, and if so, when? The most common theory is that Fergie joining was the straw that broke the camel's back, but as Todd in the Shadows argues in his review of "The Time (Dirty Bit", their lyrical content really never changed much after she joined, and that if they did sell out, it was probably when they started using electronica and Auto-Tune more than their standard guitar fare (which would mean The E.N.D. would be the selling-out point).
• Critical Backlash: Their Fergie era is a major source of this thanks in large part to overexposure colliding with memetic trolling, The E.N.D. and The Beginning being especially hyped up as travesties against music. With the benefit of a few years for both the hype and vitriol to fade, The E.N.D. borders on Vindicated by History having produced a number of extremely popular tracks now considered party anthems. Several entries from The Beginning, meanwhile, have gradually found some appreciation, and the album as a whole borders on a concept album showing hints of the members' turn toward the more avant-garde side of things that got lost on many under the dance stylings and general over-play of their previous albums.
• Critical Dissonance:
  • This is especially true for their song "My Humps", which was savaged by critics but still managed to become exceedingly popular and even won the 2007 Grammy Award for "Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal", in addition to the music video winning a VMA for "Best Hip-Hop Music Video."
  • Incredibly enough, The E.N.D wasn't very well-received, but the album singles were.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: To Filipinos. Mainly because apl.de.ap is of Filipino descent^note Born to an African-American father who was an airman stationed at Clark Air Base (who left him shortly after birth) and a Filipina mother; also, his stage name references both his initials and his home city and province - "de (of) Angeles, Pampanga", which led him to produce a number of songs about the Philippines (Bebot and The APL Song, along with Take Me To The Philippines, a promotional song done in collaboration with the Department of Tourism). He also the subject of an episode of a local biographical docudrama TV series, and he currently serves as a coach for the local version of The Voice.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • An album named The Beginning ended up being their last album before a long hiatus.
  • In the short film version of the music videos for "Rock That Body" and "Imma Be", will.i.am makes a computer program that does all the music work for them instead of creating it from the ground up, which angers Fergie and she storms out yelling "We're not robots!" The next decade after this video was released, AI (artificial intelligence) became the norm for some video creators which does exactly that, from videos and voices to audio.
  • "Pump It" (2005) contains unintentional foreshadowing of "Imma Be" (2009), with the lyric "Imma be real on us".
  • In the opening for the music video of "Where Is the Love?", posters of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City are shown, being plastered over with the question mark symbol featured throughout the video. A decade later, "Meet Me Halfway" would be featured on Non-Stop-Pop FM in Grand Theft Auto V's Updated Re Release (in addition to Fergie's "Glamorous" being featured on the same station in the original game).
• It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: The group when comparing to before after adding Fergie to the lineup, which is when they switched to a more pop oriented sound and became more commercially successful.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I'm a Bee"^ExplanationMany people misheard the chorus of "Imma Be" as "I'm a bee". Doesn't help that the cover of the single◊ features a bee. One could argue it's a more famous Mondegreen than "kiss this guy".
  • Add to that, the infamous line of the song "I'mma be ya banker loading out semen", goes into Narm.
  • A clip of Otto Octavius' Heroic Sacrifice in Spider-Man 2 set to "I Gotta Feeling" has become viral in Brazil in 2023.
• Narm:
  • will.i.am claiming "[he] be rockin' dem BEATZ!!!!1" on "Boom Boom Pow", over a repetitive, tepid and rather beat free beat counts.
  • This gem from "One Tribe":
    If I had an enemy, then my enemy's gonna come try to kill me 'cuz I'm his enemy.
• One-Scene Wonder: In the video for "The Time (Dirty Bit)" there is a very memorable dancer who writhes for about 15 seconds who has the unfortunate tendency to be unintentionally hilarious.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The Black Eyed Peas Experience, a pale attempt to capitalize on the Just Dance craze. (Coincidentally, the latter series' creators were the publishers for Experience, technically making it part of that series.)
• Replacement Scrappy: J Rey Soul, for the already-controverial-as-is Fergie (see Base-Breaking Member above).
• Sampled Up: "Misirlou" by "Pump It" (Dick Dale is not amused), as well as Sexual Harassment's "I Need a Freak" by "My Humps". The latter of the two was the subject of a lawsuit that began even several years before the song's release due to the sample being used without authorization.
• Signature Song: "Where Is the Love" and "I Gotta Feeling". For their solo careers, Fergie has "Big Girls Don't Cry" while will.i.am has "Scream & Shout".
• So Bad, It's Good: "My Humps", at least for the lyrics alone. Many find this song annoying and entertaining for this reason.
  • The E.N.D. is looked at as cheesy and ridiculous even by "futuristic" theme standards.
• Squick: The lyrics to "Smells Like Funk" can be this, but the song is actually referring to their individual sound and authenticity.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The melody of "Meet Me Halfway" has been noted as being very similar to the riff from "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Meet Me Halfway". Even critics of Fergie's singing acknowledged the emotion in Fergie's voice makes the vocals quite powerful.
  • The beginning of the "Just Can't Get Enough" video. Made even worse that the video was filmed a week before the earthquake and tsunami.
• Unexpected Character: Sting on "Union". Then again, it's made slightly less unexpected by his song "Englishman in New York" being sampled heavily on the track.
  • Sting returned for their infamous Super Bowl performance, though in addition to him,Slash, of all people, also was there.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: At one point in the video for "Boom Boom Pow", there are disco ball-esque motion capture scenes of the members in the dark. These look unsettling to some due to their vagueness and the fact they appear from out of nowhere even for the video's atmosphere.
• Values Dissonance: 2002 was the last time someone could record a song called "Let's Get Retarded" using the word for getting drunk partying and not be viewed as grossly ableist. It's telling that the bowdlerised version "Let's Get It Started" overshadowed it even before 2022 when it was made to be the only version available.
• Win Back the Crowd: Masters of the Sun is seen as a return to form, especially as some have been burned out by the Peas' shift to electro-pop and pop-rap.

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