Will.i.am Read Online Free PDF Page A

quite a sight. ‘He’s kind of scary
looking, but his dancing is dope,’ apl told Will. Soon, both men began to wonder: ‘Who’s the dancer?’
    As for Taboo, he remembered seeing a sixteen-year-old ‘eccentric-looking black dude’, who was ‘rapping like a madman’. As Will rapped he played with his dreadlocks. His
‘wide-eyed intensity’ made Taboo wonder if this eccentric was ‘in some kind of trance’. Will was rapping faster than Taboo had ever heard anyone rap before. It was a
‘whirlwind’, remembered Will’s future bandmate in his autobiography. Even then, Will’s charisma and stage-presence were powerful. He ‘owned the floor’ and had
more energy than the rest of the club combined. ‘He was as colourful as his socks were loud, and as brilliant asanything I’d seen on the street, in videos, or in
battles.’
    From the moment the three band members first got together as a unit, recalls Taboo, it was clear they shared a ‘unity in spirit, intention and meaning’. He recalls liking Will, who
he viewed as ‘a perfectionist, all about the pristine clothes, the focus to be number one, and keen on detail’. However, that perfectionism could flare-up into confrontation with anyone
he felt might be poised to upstage him. During an open-mic battle with a twelve-year-old called Little E, Will at first let the youngster have his moment on the stage. Then, Will’s
competitive spirit kicked in and he fiercely contested. ‘Will turned it on and smoked him,’ recalled Taboo. Will’s performance made him the clear winner of the battle. Afterwards,
the boy’s uncle confronted the triumphant winner, accusing him of ‘disrespecting my little nephew’. Voices were raised and the men began to shove each other. Will’s friend
Mooky had to step in to prevent violence breaking out.
    Will was proving to be an unstoppable force in these MC battles. As the Hollywood MC champion he managed a winning streak of weekly victories that ran for an astonishing eighteen months. He
seemed almost invincible – and certainly felt it at times. He even saw off a highly rated MC from Chicago, called Twista, an artist who had appeared in
The Guinness Book of World
Records
as the fastest rapperin the world. As Taboo put it, ‘hip hop greats were bowing down’ to Will.
    There was no doubting the ferocity of Will’s ambitions. Taboo recalls how Will used to talk about his ‘big dream’ and how he was going to make it work. He was a good talker
even then: Taboo describes how Will was a natural-born storyteller, who was ‘fast, clever and animated’. Although he could be shy and ‘guarded’ when he first met people as a
teenager, Will would soon open up once he knew someone – and as he opened up, he revealed huge reserves of determination, vision and ability. Few who met him left after an encounter with Will
unaware that he intended to go places in life and that he had the ability to do so. His energy was such that he did not only impress people with his own ambition: he also recharged their own
aspirations and positivity. He quite naturally had the sort of charisma and presence that politicians sometimes spend enormous sums to try to develop.
    According to Taboo, Will was also an expert roller of joints. In his book, Taboo remembers Will handing him ‘the most expertly, perfectly rolled joint’ he had ever seen – he
described it as such a finely formed cigarette that it was as if Will had ‘micromanaged’ its construction. What also impressed Taboo was that the joint had been rolled so quickly
– but then Will has long lived his life as if he islate for an important meeting with lots of other ambitious eccentrics. Not that Will was a pot-smoker himself.
According to his bandmate, having had a bad experience with the drug, Will had decided never to try it again – and it seems clear that he has abstained from drug-taking. Perhaps he felt that
cannabis, which has a reputation as a drug that saps