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Former Black Eyed Peas member Kim Hill has responded to frontman will.i.am‘s recent comments about the group’s lack of acceptance.
During a recent appearance on Wyclef Jean’s Run That Back podcast, Will said he was hurt that Black Eyed Peas aren’t “considered a Black group”.
“In 2004, Black Eyed Peas we — we were just trying to get on,” he said. “When you think of — like, I’m a Black dude, but when you think of Black Eyed Peas, we got so big that…and it hurts, it still hurts a little bit that we’re not considered a Black group because we got that big.”
Now, Hill, who was replaced with Fergie after the group’s second album, 2000’s ‘Bridging The Gap’, has responded to Will.
“For you to make that statement 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,” Hill said in an Instagram video.
Hill’s 10-year-old son, Cassius, added: “You’re not in those Black roots anymore. So, I don’t understand how you’re not even going to talk about the Black girl that you had in your group and you’re going to skip to 2004 and you say, ‘I don’t understand how the Black community isn’t embracing us.”
Hill also talked about her 2019 New York Times documentary, Almost Famous, which saw her talk about the time she spent in Black Eyed Peas before she left, claiming that record label executives tried to get her to use her sexuality to sell Black Eyed Peas’ music.
“When my doc got on YouTube – and it’s at I don’t know like 5.4 million views with like (I had to write it down) almost 19,000 comments – the majority of those comments that come from Black women clearly say it feels like cultural smudging,” she said.
She added: “It almost hurts for it to slip off your tongue that a Black woman had a part in something really magnificent, and I don’t understand it. I was really confused.
“I’ve heard in certain spaces that when you’ve had the opportunity to say my name you don’t but to actually see it. To actually start 2021 off and actually see that you just would not talk about the evolution of The Black Eyed Peas at a time when Wyclef referenced it. And I was there.”
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