March 17, 2010
Modern Music Fans Know the Black Eyed Peas as a Very Successful, Grammy-winning Hiphop Recording Group
Modern music fans know the Black Eyed Peas as a very successful, Grammy-winning hiphop recording group. But are they also just a handful of swagger jackers? An internet music mag posed that question last year when comparisons first surfaced between a Chicago rapper’s song, Boom Dynamite, and the Peas’ hit Boom Boom Pow. The Black Eyed Peas Imma Be Rockin Body is released this week in the UK.
A swagger jack, according to urban dictionary.com, is a copycat — someone that appropriates someone else’s music or style.
The combustible query has blown up into a Fed. legal action filed last week by Chicago frontman Ebony Latrice Batts, AKA Phoenix Phenom, and her chief / producer, Manfred Mohr of halo. The pair say the Peas robbed their Boom, which won the Peas a Grammy on Sun. night for Best Short Form Video. “The hook portions of the tune are so strikingly similar that there can be no other reasonable reason but the Black Eyed Peas copied Phoenix’s song,” according to the legal action. The track spent twelve weeks at No. One and was downloaded more than 4,000,000 times, according to the suit, which is searching for a songwriting credit and punishing damages. Ira Gould, the lawyer for the pair, asserted Batts was blind to the Peas’ tune until a couple of Chicago DJs called her to identify the likenesses. When Batts eventually heard Boom Boom Pow, Gould announced, she started crying. “She was annihilated by it,” he announced.
The Peas won three Grammys on Sun. with the honour for Boom Boom Pow, including best pop performance for I Got A Feeling and best pop vocal Album award for The E.N.D.