Will.i.am knows best: “Electro is today’s disco”

As well as being the frontman for pop mega-stars The Black Eyed Peas and David Guetta’s BFF, US producer/artist Will.i.am has been one of the forces responsible for taking dance music into the mainstream – as Kaskade was saying last week – adopting, or rather adapting the sounds of clubs with the help of willing dance artists like Steve Aoki, Crookers and Boys Noize.

Speaking out on the trend in a recent interview with The New York Times, Will.i.am discussed his love of clubbing, praising the scene as well as the electro genre which has become the blueprint for his latest Black Eyed Peas material.

“Electro is today’s disco — [it’s] making electronic music not for the sake of selling it but for sharing it and touring around the world DJ-ing,” he said in the interview. “Right now in the world, clubbing is needed. It’s a time when people want to rub shoulders against people they don’t know and share, even if the sharing is expressing your like over a beat.”

As dumbfounding as those quotes may be, to Will.i.am’s credit the interviewer is on another planet asking the producer questions such as “do you think rap music glamorises guns?” and then questions that are just statements like “clubbing seems to invite a lot of drinking and drug use” and the cherry on top, “Your name sounds like Sam-I-Am, from
Dr. Seuss”.

Anyway, Will.i.am’s quotes seem to solidify that the mainstream will be mining the depths of dance music for a while yet, even if they think it’s all just disco.