
Black Eyed Peas' song "Let's Get Retarded" was restyled as "Let's Get It Started" for an NBA Finals worldwide commercial. The song was quite successful on the charts worldwide, peaking at #21 on the U.S. Hot 100, #11 in the UK, and at #2 in Australia. This spot featured Carlos Santana. On the CD, it is listed as a bonus track, and is before the other bonus track "Third Eye". The unrevised song had great success as a single, particularly on the iTunes music download service and was featured on the soundtrack to the stoner road trip comedy Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. The song earned the group a 2005 Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Black Eyed Peas were then featured in the video game The Urbz: Sims in the City as characters. They re-recorded "Let's Get It started" and "Shut Up" as well as other songs in "Simlish", the dialect language used by The Sims characters. This revised version was used in the ads for the iMac G5, with will.i.am and Fergie singing about the computer
In 2004, The Black Eyed Peas embarked on the Elephunk Tour, hitting many countries, including several countries of Africa and Europe.
The Black Eyed Peas's fifth studio album, The E.N.D. ("The Energy Never Dies"), was released on June 9, 2009. "Boom Boom Pow" was released on February 22 online and March 30 on iTunes. It became the group's first song to reach #1, where it remained for 12 weeks, on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #1 in Australia, in Canada, and in the UK. The album has a more electro-hop beat rather than the usual hip hop/R&B feeling of their previous albums. The album entered the number one position on the Billboard 200 for the publication's week ending June 27, 2009, selling 304,000 copies during the week ending June 14, 2009.
The first promo single, "Imma Be", was released for download on iTunes on May 19 in the US, entering the Billboard Hot 100 at number 50 on the week ending June 6, 2009.
Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am told Billboard that The E.N.D. stands for "The Energy Never Dies", which describes his model for a project that will be living and frequently updated throughout its designated cycle. "It's a diary ... of music that at any given time, depending on the inspiration, you can add to it," the artist/producer/songwriter explains. "I'm trying to break away from the concept of an album. What is an album when you put 12 songs on iTunes and people can pick at it like scabs? That's not an album. There is no album anymore." He describes the music as "a lot of dance stuff, real melodic, electronic, and soulful. We call it, like, electric static funk, something like that."
Black Eyed Peas group member Taboo told iProng Magazine that The E.N.D. may be the last Black Eyed Peas album released in physical form, in favor of digital-only album releases in the future. "Possibly, this is the last physical CD for any group, let alone a Black Eyed Peas CD. Because four years from now, we don’t know what it could be," he explained. "It's one thing to just have a CD and need to live with that CD, but what if you were able to take those fifteen songs, and then you got ten songs the next month that you couldn’t have on the CD? And then we just keep on giving you new material and keeping it fresh and reinventing the song."
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