Party politics

Justin TIMBERLAKE may have come up with the hook on the Black Eyed Peas’ breakthrough single, “Where Is the Love,” but a homecoming show last weekend at the Key Club proved the longtime darlings of L.A.’s hip-hop underground didn’t need a bump from him to reinvent themselves as pop.

Performing “Shut Up,” a boy-girl relationship rap from their surprise hit 2003 album “Elephunk,” the three original men of BEP traded off cutting ripostes with the group’s newest member, Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson.

To a huge surge of approval from an already sweaty and steady-rocking SRO crowd, Ferguson stopped the rap with a sweep of her hand and, planting her feet, let fly with a powerful burst of birdlike R&B; melody, gyrating her hips belly-dance style at the same time. The place fell apart as the blond, cargo-pants-clad B-girl put the boys firmly in their place.

This is the new BEP, and one that’s got the pop working in all the right places. In the authenticity-obsessed world of hip-hop, where remaining “underground” or “real” is a badge of honor but self-aggrandizement and bling are the stock in trade, the Peas are hitting the balance just right, creating a party while still remaining a positive alternative to hard-core gangsta rap.

They’ve shaken off the straitjacket of a righteous if usually mediocre stance that for years had them sounding as if they were trying a bit too hard to be of the lineage of De La Soul or A Tribe Called Quest. Instead, they’ve come back on their third album with a mix not successfully achieved since the heyday of the Fugees, but with higher energy -- a socially conscious party rap with a female voice to make it clear that politics are also about men and women.

And what a party it is: “Where Is the Love” was the No. 1 single at Top 40 radio for six straight weeks and is nominated for a Grammy for record of the year and best rap-sung collaboration. The album has sold 638,000 copies in the U.S, more than tripling the combined total of the Peas’ first two CDs, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and sales should go even higher with the release of more singles.

This kind of notice is something the Peas never imagined.

“It’s the biggest thing, man,” says Jaime “Taboo” Gomez during an interview a couple of days after the Key Club show. “I’m a kid from East L.A., a Mexican kid, and I come from like the lowest slums of the barrio.”

He says that bandmates William Adams (a.k.a. will.i.am) and Alan Pineda Lindo (Apl.de.Ap) come from similar circumstances.

“Will grew up in the projects. And Apl is from the Philippines. He lived in a hut in the jungle. For us to go from the lowest of the low to actually being nominated for a Grammy? I’m ecstatic!”

They even kept their political cred: “Where Is the Love” is in part a caustic antiwar song -- brave stuff in a pop music climate where the Dixie Chicks were skewered for singer Natalie Maines’ anti-President Bush comments. The Peas take it a lot further, even calling the CIA “terrorists” in the song.

“It wasn’t really an antiwar song,” explains Gomez. “The premise behind it was: Before we start trying to find terrorists in other places, there is terrorism here. Terrorism, for us, is gang violence to racism to evil politics. This was a song where we wanted people to find love within themselves.”

The Peas’ connection to the new prince of pop predated last summer’s as opening act on Timberlake’s tour with Christina Aguilera. Gomez had played a new Black Eyed Peas track over the phone to Timberlake, who had become a friend, and a few days later, the prolific writer-singer-dancer called back and said he had a hook for it. The resulting “Where Is the Love” has been an international sensation, and the Peas have been globetrotting since the album’s release in June.

That kind of success has been a long time coming, as the Peas have been a local club mainstay for more than a decade. Adams and Pineda Lindo came together in 1993 and were signed to Ruthless Records, the label of N.W.A rapper Eric “Eazy-E” Wright. They produced an album in 1994 called “Grassroots,” which never came out. Wright died in 1995 and they were released from Ruthless, then found Gomez and became the Black Eyed Peas in 1995.

Building up to ‘Elephunk’

The group’s 1998 debut, “Behind the Front,” caused a local sensation. The trio was hyperkinetic, they were good break dancers, and they seemed to fit in with a growing tradition of L.A. alternative hip-hop with the Pharcyde, Jurassic 5 and other crews. On the key songs “Fallin’ Up” and “Joints and Jams,” they established a sound generated by a live band, but without some of the samples, singalong choruses and attitude that make hip-hop cross over to a mass audience.

The 2000 follow-up, “Bridging the Gap,” was similar -- hitting the right themes, resisting the urge to glorify violence, bling and racism -- but wasn’t as stirring as their club-born live show.

“Elephunk,” however, is the product of a different caliber of inspiration. Adams, who produces all of BEP’s recordings, was looking for a female lead for “Shut Up” when a friend suggested Ferguson. The guys knew her, but only as a good dancer they ran into at clubs. They didn’t know she’d been part of a pop vocal group, Wild Orchid, and when she nailed her part on “Shut Up” in about an hour, they invited her to do more, eventually expanding the group to include her.

“Not only is it sexy, but it’s empowerment for a woman to be up there with three wild-ass cats,” says Gomez. “And bein’ white? Man, she got so many things against her right now in the hip-hop world, but she’s killin’ it.”

It’s now hard to imagine the Peas without her. At the Key Club, Ferguson was onstage belting out “Bringing It Back” as the show’s energy pushed steadily higher all night.

Two songs later, they broke into their party anthem “Let’s Get Retarded,” the song Gomez calls “our nuclear bomb,” and the crowd went wild. It was easily the energy peak of the night -- and it hasn’t even been released as a single yet. In fact, it’s probably fourth in line, after “Shut Up” and “Hey Mama.” And no Timberlake anywhere in sight.