will.i.am, Songs About Girls

Songs About Girls is derivative, repetitive, insipid, insincere and pandering. Oh, and if that weren't enough, it also has the worst insert booklet in recent memory: seven pages of will.i.am mugging in a checkered suit. Actually, the first song, "Over," a lover's lament featuring a sample from Electric Light Orchestra (never a bad thing), isn't terrible. But with first single "I Got It from My Mama," will's ship crashes directly into the iceberg. It's an almost note-for-note ripoff of "My Humps," which means the millennium has a new worst single. On "The Donque Song," Snoop regurgitates some of his Doggystyle rhymes over a techno beat, and then, on "One More Chance," will vomits up this gem: "I know you want more than a dick in ya, you want a good nigga to stick with ya." Elsewhere, "Fantastic" contains yet another sample of the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," and "S.O.S" (are we done yet?) is an anti-global-warming power ballad, which is hard to get too upset about. Perhaps the culture that produced this album deserves its fate.