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"  With a new dance-inspired Black Eyed Peas album dominating iPods everywhere, the ultimate cheeky front woman opens up about life back with the boys and why she really doesn&amp;#039;t think she&amp;#039;s all that. ELLE:  You&amp;#039;re back with the Black Eyed Peas after a hugely successful solo album. How was the transition? F:  The thing is, no matter how long we haven&amp;#039;t talked or seen each other, when we do see each other it&amp;#039;s always the same. We&amp;#039;re just that close. It&amp;#039;s like those friends you see and nothing ever changes\u2014but at the same time, the music is always evolving. ELLE:  How has it evolved with your new album, The E.N.D.? F: We brought a little more of an electronic sound into the fusion of music. It&amp;#039;s definitely a party record; it&amp;#039;s a club record. There&amp;#039;s a reggae-inspired song, there&amp;#039;s a Bollywood-inspired song. Every time we do an album we try to push the envelope and challenge ourselves, and this time we challenged ourselves even more. ELLE:  Now, no one can imagine the Peas without you, but what was the response like when you first joined the all-guy group in 2003? F: When I first joined, there were a lot of people who didn&amp;#039;t know what to make of me, and they&amp;#039;d been a fan of Black Eyed Peas being an underground hip-hop band. Then I come in, and the first song we released when I was in the band was &amp;quot;Where is the Love?&amp;quot; with Justin Timberlake. So when that hit all the crossover markets a lot of people said it was my fault that they were taken out of the underground. I had to read a lot of criticism\u2014but it only made me hungrier.  ELLE: How do you think your image changed after you joined? F: It&amp;#039;s funny, when I first joined the Peas I didn&amp;#039;t ever want to wear a skirt. I was in a kind of hard-edge point in my life, rough around the edges, collecting unemployment and living at my mom&amp;#039;s. I wasn&amp;#039;t in a girly mood at all. But finally, when &amp;quot;Hey Mama&amp;quot; came around, the guys persuaded me to wear a skirt, and then once I did, it was kind of fun and flirty, and I started exploring that part of my personality again. ELLE:  You&amp;#039;ve had big hits with songs like &amp;quot;My Humps&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Fergalicious,&amp;quot; but you&amp;#039;ve been quoted basically saying that audiences should take all the &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m so hot&amp;quot; lyrics with a grain of salt. F:  Oh yeah, it&amp;#039;s very campy. Part of that goes back to the origin of rap music and hip-hop culture\u2014a lot of rap is based on talking about your good qualities and bragging. And with some of my favorites\u2014like Roxanne Shant\u00E9 and Salt-n-Pepa and J.J. Fad\u2014it was the same type of thing. I don&amp;#039;t really think all that of myself all the time. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/interviews/a10081/women-in-music-fergie-326454/>