Published: Monday - October 2, 2006
Words by Starrene Rhett
Taboo as Mecinism (Photo: Snickers)
You may have been in the movie theatre and during the previews saw a long Snickers commercial/mini drama featuring the Black Eyed Peas and wondered what it was. If that's the case, you witnessed "Instant Def," a merge between Snickers and the Black Eyed Peas. With a series of five comic book-style episodes, Fergie, apl.de.ap, Will.i.am and Taboo become superheroes after an accidental explosion in a Snickers plant leaves them with hip-hop related superpowers. In the "Instant Def" series, they serve as the avengers of real hip-hop. Ballerstatus.com got a chance to talk with Taboo about the series.
BallerStatus.com: "Instant Def" is a campaign that Snicker's launched with the Black Eyed Peas in June. Can you elaborate on what it is exactly?
Taboo: We were on tour and Jimmy Smit, who's actually the writer for the campaign (he did Lebron James' "Chamber of Fears") came on tour with us and we just started kicking around ideas about how we wanted to present ourselves with the campaign. We came up with the whole concept of superheroes, but we wanted to represent our hip-hop culture. It was already a marriage between Black Eyed Peas and the brand Snickers, and when we do collaborations or marriages with brands -- for example, Best Buy: in Best Buy they sell music, we're music lovers, so that makes sense; we did a think with the Honda Civic Tour, the first car that I owned was a Honda Civic. The reason why we felt comfortable with Snickers was because Will is a big Snickers fan. When he's in the studio, he likes to eat Snickers. He doesn't eat any food, it's just that, so it made sense. And then, the fact that we each had creative freedom to input into our individual characters was another good thing. We shot it in like two weeks of strenuous hours. I would get there from like 7:30 in the morning and I would not leave the set until like 4 in the morning for like eight or nine days straight.
BallerStatus.com: You had creative control, but did each of you create your own character?
Taboo: We all came up with our own, like, how can I flip my whole script? Like I'm Mecinism, he's like a Martial Arts type cat with white hair like Rayden (from Mortal Kombat) and a copper face, and it flipped the whole script with me being the sexy one in the Black Eyed Peas. I'm not the sexy one anymore, I'm the one who's kind of on some intellectual stuff like Mr. Spock [in] he way Mecinism speaks as opposed to Zap, which is the character that you first saw. He's a little bit more timid. He has an accent. He's basically the quiet, timid one, but when he becomes Mecinism, he knows what to say at the right time. So, that's what my character is about. I wanted to give a different side of me.
BallerStatus.com: That's dope. Can you break down some of the other characters?
Taboo: Yeah. Ella, who is Fergie, her name is Tag when she gets her superhuman powers. She's basically the girl that always scribbles in her notepad. She's an artist, but she's not confident with her art. So when the explosion happens, she becomes Tag. She has the ability to take her spray can and when she draws on the wall, it comes to life.
Eye4Eye, which is Apl (apl.de.ap), he can't see, so he has a seeing eye dog. And this dog basically dictates his life, so when the explosion happened, his spirit went into dog and the dog spirit went into his. So now, he has capabilities of...he's a dog now.
[Will.i.am] basically has the ability to send out all these music sound waves because he's musically inclined. But, he stutters all the time. When he becomes a superhero, he can rap and he's dope and he becomes the true emcee that he's always been.
So, everything coincides with everyone's individual personality. For example, Apl, he really has an eye problem, he's legally blind. Will, he's a musical genius, all he does day and night, is music. Me, I may not be as intellectual as Mecinism, but I have flavor and style like Mecinism. With the black gloves and the white hair and style, it's just flavor. Fergie, Fergie has always been the type of person that doodles in her notepad. She's always about scheduling and drawing these little characters, so it kind of coincides with our every day living.
BallerStatus.com: In episode one, you guys made a bold statement, which is that you guys represent real hip-hop. So ,what makes the Black Eyed Peas real hip-hop?
Taboo: Real hip-hop is not "let me shoot you in your face and I'm hard; I'm from the projects." Yeah, that's cool, that's where it came from, but real hip-hop to us is b-boying. Hip-hop to us is graffiti. Hip-hop to us is MC'ing; DJ'ing. All these elements that bring to the forefront, elements of reality to us and our culture. A lot of people misconstrue that unless you sell records you ain't hip-hop. But at the end of the day, our main focus is to let people around the world know that, "Yeah, a Mexican Kid from East LA can become hip-hop. It ain't gotta be a Black thing or a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, it can be some Mexican Kids from East LA."
The only thing that saved my life was break dancing. I could have been caught up where people would say (in Mexican accent), "Hey, why you dress like a black guy? You Mexican?" But, I chose to be like, "Nah man, it ain't about being black or white. It's about technique. I'm a dope dancer B." And I feel like I didn't come from the Bronx or Brooklyn, but I'm gonna rock it just as hard as the Soul Brothers or all these people that used to dance with Big Daddy Kane, MC Lyte and all these people that growing up, that's what I like. A kid from the Philippines that didn't know a word of English, but when he came to America and became one of the hardest emcees out there and one of the dopest dancers I've ever seen in me life.
A kid from East LA projects, the only black family to live in these projects, but for some reason, he didn't get caught up in the gangs. He went out and became one of the best musical geniuses you will ever meet in your life and that's Will.i.am. And because of our friendship in hip-hop, we brought our souls together and became the forefront of...not just the Black guy, the Mexican guy, the Filipino Dude and a White chick. It was more like check out my skill and my technique. Don't look at hip-hop as my color, look at hip-hop as my culture.
BallerStatus.com: Considering that the Black Eyed Peas is a very diverse group, what does the type of diversity that you guys represent mean to and for the hip-hop culture?
Taboo: The thing about it is that hip-hop is no longer in the states. I have surpassed the States. You go to Korea, you go to Vietnam, you go to the Philippines, you go to Europe, South Africa; hip-hop lives there. And when I say hip-hop, I mean from the gear to the way people talk. It may not be said in English, but the way their mannerisms are. When you go to these countries and you see graffiti, dope pieces; that's hip-hop. I go to these nightclubs and I see circles of b-boys that don't know a word of English, but they're dressed to the T -- rocking halos and furs, Nikes -- that's hip-hop, so that's what we encompass. We take what we learned as kids and incorporate it in our careers.
BallerStatus.com: Ok back to Instant Def, the next and last episode debuted on September 8. Can you give a brief summary of it?
Taboo: The last episode is when we battle the Boo-T Records (the bad guy). This is when you see us in our superhero outfits, we're battle ninjas. Mag The Dog comes and saves us. Basically, it becomes a fight for hip-hop culture, and presenting these heroes as saviors of the Boom-Bap, the true art form of hip-hop. You see these ninjas that try to fight us, but for some reason, we turn them into break dancing ninjas to show them that this is the way we fight. We fight on the dance floor. Metaphorically, when you see the episode, these are the things that let people know that we come from that era. This is true, this is the true era of what hip-hop as a culture means to us. Beyond the bling bling and all the stuff that Boo-T Records presents to the mainstream.
BallerStatus.com: Where can people see these episodes?
Taboo: InstantDef.com or if they go on Blackeyedpeas.com, they have links to the episodes.
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