- Label
- Polydor
- Release date
- 8th June 2009
- Genre
- R&B
- Buy this album
- Order CD
Hip-hop fusion with added pop bits.
The phrase "sprawling" is often applied to current albums. In part due to the pressure to record large numbers of tracks to fill the remit of bonus tracks and download exclusives, often albums lose focus and end up as a bunch of some good stuff, some bad stuff and some unfinished stuff but mainly just too much stuff. That's certainly the case here but it’s completely deliberate.
On first play The E.N.D. (an acronym for Energy Never Dies) is hard to get your head around. As it is with the marvelous, lurching, oozing, bonkers patterns of Boom Boom Pow the album flies all over the place and often within the same track. A baffling pile of wonder then but some of it makes perfect pop sense straightaway.
For all there nonsense cheesy raps ("I'm so three thousand and eight, you're so two thousand and late), massive overuse of auto-tune (there's two thousand and late right there will.i.am) and Fergie's terrible attempts to be street (Electric City finds her trying on MIA's accent) there’s something irresistibly upbeat about The Black Eyed Peas that makes you overlook their shortcomings. Amid it all, too are some sterling pop songs (Feelgood, Meet Me Halfway, I Gotta Feeling, Party All The Time) that are a match to Pink and Lady Gaga and manage to be both positive and futuristic.
More to try:
Eminem: Relapse
Pink: Funhouse
Gwen Stefani: The Sweet Escape
Kanye West: 808’s And Heartbreak
