Bridging The Gap

Never trust anyone who tells you they're honest‚ as la mère Porcelli used to say. Advice like that might give one pause when listening to Black Eyed Peas' sophomore foray into Keeping Hip-Hop Real For The Masses.

We know this is the game plan, because not only are the hugely, er, credible Wyclef Jean, Macy Gray and the redoubtable Mos Def present and correct, but the BEP spend every second or third song bigging themselves up and taking the proverbial out of rappers who (a) sing about bitches/ho’s/drugs/guns/money, (b) are only in it for the dead presidents or (c) just plain can't rap. Fair enough, but the BEP lyric book itself is neither memorably clever in its use of language, nor particularly revelatory or meaningful.

Where they succeed, however, is

in fusing the rather groovier party-clothes end of hip-hop (think a modern but non-funny De La Soul) to irresistible brass-spiked Latino night rhythms and dusky Spanish murmurs straight from the barrios of their native LA.

There's also an unmistakeable classic jazz-soul sensibility here, singing out through plangent jazz guitars, squelchy seventies keyboards, moodily lovely chord changes to make John Coltrane or Stevie Wonder sigh and some breezily evocative backing vocals from Kim Hill.

All of which means that, when they say (for the hundredth time) that they're for real, we happily take their word for it.