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Will.i.am Scores Justin Bieber, LMFAO For Solo Album

June 19, 2012

Will.i.am

Will.i.am's new solo album, #willpower, has been a long time coming. The record is now apparently due in the fall, and while it will feature special guests like Justin Bieber, LMFAO, Ne-Yo and Nicole Scherzinger, the final cut probably will not include recent singles "T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)" with Mick Jagger and Jennifer Lopez and "Check It Out" with Nicki Minaj and Cheryl Cole.

"I just always want to put out songs. They don't necessarily have to be part of an album," the rapper told Billboard.com. "Those are just songs to let people know along the way what I'm working on. That's me having an audio, musical conversation with the public."

Will added that the new effort will be pretty artsy and eclectic, as he experimented with many different sounds. "There's classical shit, like just me and a guitar and an orchestra or me with just an orchestra and a kid's choir," he explained. "There's some ghetto, ugly, dirty stuff. And then there's dance stuff, global world stuff and, like, avant garde, left-of-center, for-art's-sake music that has nothing to do with getting played on the radio. I'm just art-ing out. It's pretty diverse."

Will's main band, The Black Eyed Peas, will remain on hiatus, as the other members wish to take a break from touring and recording. However, Will said that the group "definitely" will put out another album at some point. He also stated that he'll only tour in support of #willpower if he can find a way for his solo show to be as good as a Peas show.

"What I have going against me is everybody saying, 'Where the other three people at?' I can't just go out with a bunch of background dancers to make up for the fact Fergie, Ap and Taboo aren't there," he conceded. "So I have to come up with a different idea and invent something to make people say, 'Dang, that was better than what you were doing with the Peas!' That won't be easy, but if I can't do that, I'm staying home."

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