will.i.am… Satan’s own jester for the dot com era

Review: will.i.am. – #willpower

Published on May 14th, 2013 | Rob Abrams

If you are a fellow user of Spotify Social, then there’s no doubt that once every-so-often, like me, you occasionally take a peek at what music your nearest and dearest have been using as a backdrop to make their nocturnal ramblings through Reddit and Lolcatz seem like anything other than the hushed pleas for help that they really are.

It was in this context that I risked social (media) alienation by subjecting my playlist to the latest installment of will.i.am’s perpetual excuse for slack-jawed university freshers to grind each other raw. Since #willpower – I’ll give you a second to take that in and come to terms with it – clocks in at an impressive eighteen tracks, and I have better things to be doing, such as getting water boarded, I’ll only be detailing the ‘key moments’ of this diatribe of our age…

“This Is Love”

I’ll be frank, Will.I.Am, if this is really what love is, then Elton John is rolling in his grave. What? Elton John’s not dead you say? Well he is now, because he heard this and scratched his own head off using the thorns of a single red rose. What a way to go.

In answer to will.i.am’s demand “Baby let’s get it tonight / If you feel it say ‘hell yeah'”, hundreds of voices are then heard to respond “hell yeah”. Seriously speaking, this song is clearly nothing more than an attempt to romanticise will.i.am’s perverse love for mass orgies with his army of backing-singers. Won’t somebody think of the children? (No, not in that way.)

“Gettin’ Dumb”

This song is actually quite clever. Surely this is will.i.am’s social commentary on the state of the popular music scene in 2013 at its best. Not only is he paying homage to just how mind-numbingly thick his own stage name is, he has recruited fellow luddites of contemporary electronic music apl.de.ap and 2NE1 to help him warn us all to “watch out for the dumb dumb, watch out”. Good advice. Let’s move on…

“#thatPOWER”

I am genuinely impressed by the bravado of this title. Not only does it pay tribute to will.i.am’s fan base of wannabee-hipster ‘tweens’ by swiftly beating the dead horse of ‘ironic’ hash-tagging, it also displays the unnecessary caps lock of an irate, internet-literate 15 year old; bigger MEANS better?

Justin Bieber, fresh from belittling Nazi atrocities in the Netherlands, features on this track. While he informs the listener that he is indeed, as I’d suspected, alive, will.i.am displays his incredible talent for making words that wouldn’t conventionally match, rhyme. What other pop stars do you know who can claim to possess the same qualities as a Latin American country? That will.i.am sure is ‘chil-ay’!

“This World is Crazy”

Well, well done will.i.am and Dante Santiago, you went and said something political! I sure bet that as you tour from continent to continent in luxury on your plush buses and private jets, the people who sweep up the discarded cans of Red Bull after your shows are satisfied that they’re taking part in an altruistic campaign questioning the injustice which exists in the world; maybe everyone is just “crazy”?

You’re probably quite right when you say “everybody just wanna be famous”. I guess that’s why they’re “whiling (?) on the internet, acting all shameless”, cutting their hair into right-angles and making generic, repetitive pop music, ‘n’ shit! Pandering to the silent, moral majority? Yup, all the way to the fucking bank.

“Ghetto Ghetto”

Well I am speechless. It’s Eric Cartman from South Park feat. Carl’s little brother Ike, and they’re ‘dissecting’ the social ills of inner-city ghettos.

I’m done. I’ve lost all #willpower to live.

Rocksucker says: Quail Massacre!