CD Review: wil.i.am -- Songs About Girls

wil.i.am
Songs About Girls
(will.i.am Music Group/Interscope)
Derivative, repetitive, insipid, insincere, and pandering, Songs About Girls also has the worst insert booklet in recent memory — seven pages of will.i.am mugging in a checkered suit. Get over yourself! Let's be fair, though: The first song, "Over," a lover's lament featuring a sample from Electric Light Orchestra (never a bad thing), isn't terrible. But with a first single like "I Got It from My Mama," the ship crashes directly into the iceberg. The tune is an almost note-for-note rip-off of "My Humps," which means, we guess, there's a new worst single of the millennium. On "The Donque Song," Snoop regurgitates some of his Doggy-style rhymes over a techno beat, and then, on "One More Chance," will.i.am vomits up this gem: "I know you want more than a dick in ya/You want a good nigga to stick with ya." "Fantastic" contains a sample of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," and "S.O.S." (are we done yet?) is an anti-global-warming power ballad. But by this point, it's difficult to get upset about it. Perhaps the culture that produced this album deserves such a fate. -- Ben Westhoff