00:00I'm from Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles.
00:02605, that's East LA, on the 17th, that's East LA.
00:07I was going through my hard drive, wait.
00:09So I woke up, and I thought that there was barbecue.
00:12Well, I woke up to go get me a cold pop,
00:14then I thought somebody was barbecuing.
00:17I said, oh Lord Jesus, it's a fire.
00:19I done put on no shoes or nothing,
00:20I just ran out of my house.
00:22Is that what you asked me?
00:23If Mike heard, he'd be like, oh my gosh, I love that.
00:25You just take this fire in your eyes,
00:27people have fire in their eyes all the time.
00:29I love that.
00:30But hardworking people, families,
00:31people that want to become citizens
00:33and through their hard work, contributions to the workforce,
00:37to have those people's lives threatened to be sent back,
00:40that ain't cool.
00:48What made me want to do a solo project right now?
00:50I was going through my hard drive,
00:52and I just saw all this music, this unreleased stuff.
00:55I started thinking of AI.
00:58I'm like, I need to get this stuff out
01:01before people get just accustomed to AI
01:04and they forget about human, fully human made.
01:07I just wanted to put out music,
01:08so I got like three albums coming, three albums.
01:13That's just me by myself.
01:14Then I got Black Eyed Peas stuff.
01:16But yeah, so this is the first installment
01:18of the things that I got coming.
01:20I was raised up with some Aztec warriors,
01:22homies from the barrio.
01:24Those are my supporters.
01:25I'm from Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles,
01:27a predominantly Mexican neighborhood.
01:28That's where I was born and raised.
01:29That's where my mom was raised.
01:31I just wanted to flip that particular part of the song
01:34that says East LA,
01:35and I wanted to put it on repeat
01:37and then build around East LA.
01:40I've been loving East LA.
01:44And show some love to the community that I come from,
01:47that I was born and raised in,
01:48especially now with all that's happening
01:50with immigration issues
01:52and people that I grew up with,
01:54their parents, their kids,
01:55threatened, worried, anxiety.
01:58I went back to my neighborhood
01:59after I had some success with the Black Eyed Peas
02:01and I started my school.
02:02And after school program, teaching kids computer science,
02:05robotics, college prep, we've had thousands of kids graduate.
02:09We've sent kids to Dartmouth, to Brown, to Stanford,
02:11to USC, UCLA.
02:13Their dedication and consistency and audaciousness, ambition,
02:19is proof that folks that come from another country
02:22can come, work hard, and apply themselves.
02:25There wouldn't be a Jeff Bezos
02:27if it wasn't for, you know, Michael Bezos.
02:29A Cuban migrant who made an amazing life for himself,
02:33raise someone that wasn't his, you know, blood,
02:36that became a Jeff Bezos.
02:42My favorite food, when I wasn't vegan, it was menudo.
02:46Now that I am vegan, a nice vegan breakfast burrito,
02:50vegan chilaquiles.
02:51East Side Love, the name says it for itself, you know.
02:55That one and Don Quixote's.
02:58My favorite part of the neighborhood to hang out in
03:00was Estrada Quartz, the project's where I'm from.
03:02They had everything there.
03:03If I'm here on a Sunday, that's where I'm riding my bike.
03:06I go back to the neighborhood.
03:08There's lots of folks.
03:09There's lots of artists.
03:10Let me see.
03:10What's that like emo group from East LA?
03:13It's a girl and a dude.
03:15She sings like some very moody, emotional song.
03:18It's from the 80s.
03:20This one.
03:20Yo, where's Mazzy Star from?
03:27Chia, Mazzy Star.
03:29They got them roots in Santa Monica, California.
03:33I thought they was from East LA.
03:34Look, Chia, it's wild how music can play tricks on the mind,
03:37right?
03:38Sometimes they themselves seem to come from somewhere deeper,
03:40a place that's familiar, you know?
03:42Mazzy Star got that way about them,
03:44making you feel a certain closeness.
03:46But hey, East LA's got its own legendary pulse,
03:49and ain't nobody taking that away.
03:50I told you, she's from East LA.
03:53She's from East LA.
03:55The group is from Santa Monica.
03:56The group is from Santa Monica.
04:02There's a song that I have on my hard drive called
04:05Fire In Your Eyes that samples Michael Jackson.
04:07The same way I sampled Michael Jackson in The Girl Is Mine.
04:11You know what Michael Jackson says?
04:12The fire's in his eyes and it make it really clear, so beat it.
04:16Right?
04:17What I did was I just took the fire's in your eyes,
04:20the eyes, eyes, eyes, you got fire in your eyes.
04:23But then they didn't want me to clear that.
04:25Whatever.
04:26If Mike heard it, he'd be like, oh my gosh, I love that.
04:28You just taking this fire in your eyes.
04:30People have fire in their eyes all the time.
04:32But yeah, but guess what?
04:33I can't hear it and give me the thumbs up.
04:35But it's cool.
04:35I get it.
04:36Why is Taboo on East LA?
04:44You know, that was a conundrum for me.
04:47Because I'm like, okay, if Taboo's on it, ain't that a Black Eyed Pea song, man?
04:51Well, first it was a song, a solo song first.
04:53And I'm doing my solo project now.
04:55And it's not a Black Eyed Pea project.
04:56But I could do Will.i.am featuring Taboo.
04:58Because Taboo is, he was raised in Dogtown projects, and we're both proud Eastsiders.
05:04True Angelenos are either north of the 101, south of the 10, east of the five.
05:09Those are Angelenos.
05:10And there's a lot of Black Eyed Pea fans out there.
05:12They're gonna be like, wait, what?
05:13What's going on here?
05:14Don't trip.
05:15We're gonna have a, you know, me and Apple the App collaboration, too, and the Apple
05:19the App and Taboo.
05:20We wanted to do something that, in the years of Black Eyed Peas, ways of configuring collaborations
05:25and expression that we haven't done yet.
05:27And this is one of those.
05:28Rock that body.
05:29Come on, come on, rock that body.
05:31Rock your body.
05:33Rock that body is booming on TikTok.
05:35And that's amazing.
05:36When people, you know, select your music, your past music, and express yourselves through
05:42it.
05:43That's what it's all about.
05:44And it's like, oh, it's 14 years ago.
05:46That's like 14 years ago.
05:47I gotta have a 14 year old.
05:49So rock that body is a thing on TikTok right now while AI is booming.
05:56And the beginning of rock that body predicts the age of AI that we are in with text to music.
06:01You know, go to the beginning of the video and I'm like, yo, look, check this out.
06:05This right here is going to take the peas to the future.
06:06You type the lyrics in here and this machine is going to sing it.
06:09It's the future right here.
06:10That was in 2009.
06:11There was no large language model.
06:12There was no diffusion model.
06:13The concept of like a machine singing, producing.
06:15That was not the norm thought process.
06:18And now that rock that body is trending, the time where AI is booming and that video predicts
06:26it, it's kind of wild.
06:26The four of us back together, I don't know if that would ever happen.
06:34But I don't know if the three of us were together.
06:36That's what it was when we started the group.
06:38It all depends.
06:39I think Griggy has planted in her foundation being an awesome mom to Axel.
06:43And so we honor that and we respect that, we salute her, we love her and support her dream.
06:49And then me and the lads, me and the lads, we've had this dream since we were youngins.
06:53Since we were 16, 17 and now we're still dreaming.
06:57I have a bunch of ways to express, inform, entertain, engage in deep conversations, fun conversations,
07:10you know, future cast.
07:11It's going to be an awesome creative project this week.
07:15In the crisp, sterile environment of the operating room, the lead surgeon picks up the scalpel.
07:21The surgeon uses surgical scissors to carefully cut along strategic points.
07:25Wow.
07:26This is amazing.
07:27We reenacted the freaking surgery.
07:29Anyhow, this AI stuff is nuts.
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