Former Black Eyed Peas member Kim Hill isn’t feeling will.i.am’s previous statements that the Black Eyed Peas aren’t considered a “Black” group because of their pop success. Hill was a member of the group prior to their breakout success, leaving in 2000, and was later replaced by Fergie in 2002. She accused The Black Eyed Peas frontman of wanting celebration from his culture although he doesn’t give it in return. Hill expressed her disappointment in a video she posted along with her 10-year-old son Cassius.
“I’ll speak to you directly Will, I love you. I’ve made it plain. I’ve made it clear. I have supported the Peas, post my departure, publicly and privately. I’ve reached out to all three of the guys over the years at all their big milestones to congratulate them and that has come from a very pure place. And I say that not really being a fan of the direction or the music at all. I say this with love. I was in the Black Eyed Peas, it became the Navy beans or something else. It’s not my band. It’s not what I was in. And that’s totally fine. But Will, why I’m coming on camera and addressing you today, as if the onus is on the Black community to celebrate you and the band, when you didn’t celebrate us. It’s almost like there’s this cultural smudging…
“I’ve heard that when you have the opportunity to say my name, you don’t. But to actually see it, to see that you would not talk about the evolution of The Black Eyed Peas, at a time when Wyclef referenced it and I was there—it’s mind blowing. It feels like the erasing of the imprint of a powerful Black woman. You may have more money than I’ll ever have in a lifetime but I have something you cannot buy. As I said in the doc, I have my happy. I always stayed rooted in my Blackness. And I fought for that when I was at Interscope as a soloist and when I was in the Black Eyed Peas and I constantly got pushback.
“You want to have the same community that helped build you—us coming out of the Native Tongue movement, to now hold you in the space where we hold Mos Def and De La [Soul] and Tribe [Called Quest] and Slum Village. These are all our people because we all toured with them. All these brothers, to this day, hold me to the highest regard. But I don’t get it from you, not publicly. You want that same community to validate you and you put a white girl in that place…I’m just Black enough for there not to be a thumb big enough to smudge me out of this story. God has me covered. But so many Black women that love me and follow me, they don’t have it like me. They don’t have enough representation. When Black women keep holding y’all down, it’s still the reindeer games.”
Check out the rest of her views about The Black Eyed Peas below.
