I hope that people are cautious about how they re-enter the world post-Covid
Will.i.am talks to MARION McMULLEN about making music in a pandemic and the future
‘I’VE never had this much sanitizer around me at one point in time,” sighs will.i.am. The Black Eyed Peas rapper and Voice UK coach has lost family members and close friends to Covid and says: “A lot of friends have recovered from it, but people I know have been hit hard by Covid. For everybody that has lost family, I also know people who have had Covid and who have struggled to beat it.”
It makes him think the world post-Covid could be very different place as he admits what he misses most is the normal routine of life.
“Going to the gym, everything open, eating indoors, the world being open,” he lists.
“You know I did my daily walk earlier and to see mid-day emptiness of the streets is very awkward. It’s not a good thing.”
He says there are already signs of everyone being more health conscious. “Already people are more cautious about what they put in their bodies or about touching things and then touching their face,” he says. “I think there is a whole new wave of cautious, conscious living and well-being and it’s going to spread post-covid.”
will-iam says he is looking forward to the time when he can travel again but says “at the same time I hope people are cautious about how they enter the world again. There are still a lot of people that don’t believe, the mask refusers, so yeah, going to the gym is going to be a very weird thing. Just going into a room where everybody’s sweating germs all over the dumbbells.”
The music star, who turned 46 this month, has enjoyed international success with the
Black Eyed Peas with hits like Where Is The Love?, My Humps and I Gotta Feeling.
The American group has continued to stay relevant by breaking the barriers to international, non-English speaking markets and producing party anthems for a global audience. He and fellow band members Apl.De. Ap and Taboo’s recent cross-border collaborations have seen them working with Israeli pop sensations Static & Ben El on Shake Ya Ya
Boom Boom – which the duo originally sang in Hebrew – and Latin global superstars Shakira, Nicky Jam, Maluma, Ozuna, J Balvin and Anitta.
Static & Ben El’s English version of the Black Eyed Peas song can now boast 500 million streams and wil.i.am says: “In the world of music, we always have technology and communicating and collaborating... whether you are in the room or not.
“Working with Static & Ben El it’s been great but sad at the same time because I wish I could have gone to Israel to create the video in Tel Aviv. I love it there. It’s awesome.”
Touring in the future could also face its own challenges. “I was watching a TV show yesterday, Star Trek: Discovery actually and I think it was episode seven, season two and the captain sneezed and the person next to him was like ‘Are you OK?’ and he was ‘Oh, yeah, just got a little cold.’ And I was like ‘Wow, we used to live that way.’
“People used to go to work feeling a little sick and they would blow their nose and muscle through it. And that’s not the case any more, but humanity has been around for a long time and we’ve tackled illness in the past.
“I remember travelling and performing with a cold because that’s the first thing that happens when you start to tour. If you are at home for two or three months and you go tour the first week you are going to get sick. Why? Because you’re travelling in all these new different environments and going from places that are super-cold to super-hot. You are going from indoors to outdoors and airconditioning and touching all this stuff on tour and the first thing you get on tour is sick.
“We call it a tour cough. ‘Is everything Ok?’ ‘No, it’s this crazy tickle I can’t get rid of’. Then you’re on the road, on the road, on the road and then you go home for a week and the first thing that happens when you get home is you get sick again. And that has been the case for every single person that has been on the road, I know it from touring for more than 20 years. So that is going to be a weird one because, as soon as you tour again, that first week they will be sending everyone home.”
So in a year from now what would will.i.am like to see? “The world opened up so people can travel, people going out partaking of festivities, celebrating life. People learning and preparing for tomorrow. New technologies to make how we live and play safer.
“This time last year I was working on the new Black Eyed Peas project Translations and that was all I was listening to and here we are a year later and working on the new Black Eyed Peas project and that’s all I’m listening to.
“Every once in a while I’ll pay attention to what Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube is saying but other than that what I’ve been listening to daily and weekly for the last several months is the new Black Eyed Peas project.”