"Boom Boom Pow" by The Black Eyed Peas
Note: We focus on reviewing songs, and therefore cannot comment on the appropriateness of the album in its entirety. Please use your best judgment whenever purchasing or listening to music.
The Artist
The Black Eyed Peas, an avant-guard musical quartet consisting of will.i.am, Fergie, apl.de.ap and Taboo, have “transcended their vigilant hip-hop roots and have become a global phenomenon,” to use their own words. The Black Eyed Peas are intentionally multi-cultural in their sound, and their breakthrough album "Elephunk" (2003) proved that their style of music could make money.
"Elephunk" sold 7.5 million albums worldwide, garnered 4 Grammy nominations, and 1 Grammy win. "Monkey Business," released in 2005, topped those numbers with 10 million albums sold, and 2 Grammy wins. Now, Fergie's back from her solo hit “Glamorous” and the Peas have recorded a new album called "The E.N.D."
The Album
"The E.N.D." is due to be released on June 9, 2009. “Boom Boom Pow” is the first single released from the album, and its quick rise to the number 1 spot on iTunes is a pretty good sign that this album will do well. The Black Eyed Peas style of music is difficult to classify, but this is what will.i.am said about it: ". . . a lot of dance stuff, real melodic, electronic, soulful. We call it, like, electric static funk, something like that.“ The album definitely contains a lot of swearing and sexual content.
The Song
Teenagers tell me all the time that it's not about the lyrics, it's about the beat. Well, The Black Eyed Peas took that to heart with “Boom Boom Pow.” It is a combination of dance, trance, world, and hip-hop, and the song itself is basically about how much better their beat is than yours.
The outrageous lyrics include at least one sexual reference and a half dozen uses of the s-word (including as an action verb), so don't consider this an endorsement, exactly, but it got me thinking about the idea of taking one part of something to the extreme at the expense of all the other parts.
“Boom Boom Pow” is a song about the beat, one of the most important parts of music. “Boom Boom Pow” lets the other parts of the song (other than the crazy lyrics) fade into the background in order to emphasize the beat.
The result sounds cool in a single song, but can you imagine what it would be like if all music were like “Boom Boom Pow”? If there were only techno (beat), or only classical orchestra music (harmony), or only opera (melody), or only soft rock (lyrics)? Wouldn't music be much less?
That got me thinking about how the same concept can be applied to our beliefs about God. So many of us take one belief about God and make that one aspect of God so important that everything else fades into insignificance. Some make God so much about love that they can't understand His anger. Or they make God so much about justice in this world that they forget that our real hope will only be fulfilled when Christ comes again.
Maybe they make Free Will so important that God is just a helpless bystander watching from heaven and hoping we will make the right decisions. Others make God into a big Santa Claus who gives us whatever we want if we make it on to the “Nice” list. Some people think God is like a cranky old judge, just waiting to drop the hammer on us when we mess up. And some people, many of whom have been hurt very badly, think that God doesn't really care about what happens on Earth, at all.
These are all distortions of who God really is, aren't they? None of them match the complexity of the God we see in the Bible -- the God who sent a flood to kill humanity and sent His Son to die for humanity. We can never fully understand our God. But we can seek His face in His Word.
As we grow into a greater understanding of what God wants us to do, we will know Him better. As we know Him better, we will (hopefully) act more like Him. And as we act more like Him, we become more effective ambassadors for Christ in a lost and dying world.
Questions
Your opinions are important to us. We would love to hear your answers to our questions in the comments.
- What did you think of this song?
- What do you do with songs you like the sound of that contain lyrics with swearing or sexual content? Skip them? Listen and feel kind of bad? Listen and not worry about it? Play them louder?
- Which of these misunderstandings of God is most common among your friends?
- Is there one of these misunderstandings that you struggle with? Which one and why?
- If you could ask God to explain one thing to you, what would it be?
- Does your life reflect what you believe about God? Why or why not
