Category: Imma Be Reviews

This is the Rolling Stone review published after the release of the “Imma Be Rocking That Body” video:

Imma Be Rocking That Body Video Screen Shot  

The Black Eyed Peas’ video for “Imma Be Rocking That Body” debuted today on Vevo, and we recommend popping a bag of popcorn because this is the closest you’ll get to a summer movie until Memorial Day. Clocking in at a “NovemberRain”-sized 10-and-a-half minutes, the video starts off with Will.i.am telling his BEP mates that robots are so 3000-and-eight and that the Black Eyed Peas will soon be replaced by androids, causing Fergie to storm off in another brilliant display of why singers shouldn’t always act.

From there, the Black Eyed Peas descend into the post-apocalyptic setting that Jay-Z’s “Run This Town” and Adam Lambert’s “Time for Miracles” previously visited, with the Peas outfitted in ridiculous leather garb as they ready to battle the robots, which look like Transformers. While the Peas hoist weapons around for nearly seven minutes, no one pulls the trigger, and there’s much more product placement and nonsensical lyrics like “You can be the model type, skinny with no appetite” than actual violence. The Black Eyed Peas eventually defeat the robots by infecting them with a computer virus called “Music and Dancing,” but then (SPOILER ALERT) in some Hitchcockian twist it’s revealed that the entire battle took place in Fergie’s mind. The “robots dancing” motif also played a big role in the BEP’s Grammy performance.

With three hits from “The E.N.D.” already under their belts, the Black Eyed Peas are ready to pack dancefloors again with the album’s fourth single. The group sounds as unabashedly confident as ever here, and yet it manages to keep its boasts sounding clever: “Imma be a brother, but my name ain’t Lehman,” declares Will.i.am, who also co-produced “Imma Be.”

A brazen horn section and smooth keyboards cruise along until the song’s sudden transition, when the beat switches from a snap music-meets-Neptunes stomp to a funk-house glide, meshing with a seemingly endless vocal loop of “Imma be” to form a pounding, assertive club thumper. Given the success of its predecessors, “Imma Be,” while inherently gimmicky, should be sticking around for a long time.

By Billboard.com