Black Eyed Peas are encouraging their fans to connect and share a positive message in a whole new way. Earlier this week, the group launched a “Where Is The Love?” microsite, named for their 2003 smash hit of the same name. On the site, fans can connect with other fans from all over the globe and engage with their content. Fans can make their own videos by using the official “Where Is The Love?” sound on TikTok and Instagram and by using the #wheresthelove tag. Once uploaded, fan videos are highlighted with location pins on an interactive globe, capturing the worldwide spread of the Black Eyed Peas’ message.
In the more than 20 years since its release, “Where Is The Love?” has proved to be one of the Black Eyed Peas’ most enduring cuts. However, when the group went about writing and recording it, they didn’t intend to make a hit but to find a way to deal with “the stress, the anxiety and the pain of 9/11” and the tour that they had to continue in the aftermath. In creating the beat, Will.i.am said he was inspired by a human heart beat. “We were trying to articulate the emotion of that tour, and every single person that we came across with that tour,” Will.i.am later recalled in a 2018 interview with The Telegraph. “If there was a sonic occasion to our friendship, it would be that song.”
Upon release, “Where Is The Love?” was a success for the Black Eyed Peas, charting at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping charts in countries around the world, including in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The track also became the Peas’ first to be nominated for the Grammy Award for Record of the Year—a feat they would later repeat in 2010 with “I Gotta Feeling”—and earned another nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration.
