Last week Black Eyed Peas dropped Be Nice, touted to be the lead single of their upcoming album. But the song has nice story to it. Written by Anish Sood and Adam Friedman, the song was performed by the latter on Songland, an American songwriting competition series. And before they could say snap, the Black Eyed Peas picked it up, bass-ed it down and dropped it on the internet to have fans go ga-ga over it. Sood talks about how it all came about. “I go to LA every year to write music for a month. So when I was there last year in June, a mutual friend of ours put us in touch and he was like, “You should work on something.” I went over to Adam’s studio and we worked this (track) out in one hour. We absolutely had no idea what is going to happen to this song at that time,” says Sood, who posted a clip of Friedman’s performance in the show on Instagram.
After his performance, will.i.am (of Black Eyes Peas) spoke of how the chorus is perfect material for bumper stickers or tshirts while Ryan Tedder (of One Republic) pointed out how phrases like ‘be different, be nice’ wouldn’t work on paper but the second Adam got to the chorus, he was sold. The hook is not only catchy, but it also throws positivity towards the listeners.
“The song started out with a sample I had which was quite funky. If you’ve heard the original version which Adam performed on the show, the concept was to keep it happy and positive. When we were working on the song last year, there was a lot of negativity around and Adam was in a moon where he just wanted to make a song that expresses happiness and positivity,” says Sood.
The BEP version is very different from the original track. Infact when will.i.am heard the original track for the first time, he instantly imagined adding more bass to it. “The BEP have a very distinct signature sound, and it has developed over the years. I enjoy the new version of the track. It was sounding really different to me because I kept listening to the original version while working on it in the studio. But people who have heard the tracks have liked both versions. The BEP version is more electronic and has more RnB,” says Sood.
The band released a funky video of the song too. It starts with people saying mean things and then pans out to view a roller rink. You see lots of orange and yellow hues with big smiley emojis on sweatshirts. And midway, you also have Snoop Dogg snooping in with a rap of his own. “I really liked the video, I think it’s super fun. You know nowadays music videos have this elaborate storyline and all, and I say it’s not supposed to be so complicated. It’s supposed to be just a music video which engages people in the music. I like this whole culture of freestyle dancing too. It is interesting to see everyone on roller skates,” he says, adding, “I had no idea that I was going to see Snoop Dogg in the video because the BEP added it after the song was handed over to them. I thought I was looking at the wrong song when I saw Snoop Dogg! It was so cool, it was crazy!”
This collaboration has worked wonders, and now the artist is eager for more. “I have a huge bank of songs that I've written over the years. Some I’ve released as my singles and some, like Be Nice, I want to collaborate on. Though I loved what we came up with for Be Nice, I told Adam it was too pop for me to release under my name. So I'm hoping to work with other artists, international and local, because they might like some of the ideas. The most important thing here is that I don’t want these songs to lie in my computer. If someone likes them and wants them, I want to give it to them. I want people to hear the songs,” he says, adding, “We are in talks with the show Songland to give us permission to release our version of the song too.”
