Monkey Business - Black Eyed Peas > Reviews > Definitely my style

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics	Not applicable
Quality and consistency of tracks	A couple of weak links
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Quite a few good songs
Disadvantages:	Some do start to sound a bit similar

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I was really looking forward to this album coming out as i loved the previous one, Elephunk. It is, however completley, different, but not in a bad way.
Monkey Buisness has much more focus on Fergie's voice/singing than in Elephunk. This may be one of the reasons that it does sound slightly different.
Again they have done a number of collaborations with various artists, ranging from James Brown, and Sting to Jack Johnson and in doing so have mixed their own style of music in with that of the other artist and i think they have done so successfully. They team up, again, with Justin Timberlake in My Style, to make another catchy tune,just don't go expecting it to be anything like Where is the Love.
Generally i think the first half of the album is stonger than the latter half. Including songs such as Pump It (which has that tune from Pulp Fiction as part of the backing track), Don't Phunk With My Heart and Don't Lie (which has a slightly more ballardy feel to it.). I also like the collaborations with James Brown (They Don't Want Music) and Jack Johnson (Gone Going), but then i tend to like their kinds of music as well, so it may not be to everyones taste.
Wasn't particularly taken by Bebot , Ba Bump or Disco Club, but then having said that they are not the songs on the album that I listen to most frequently, so they might yet grow on me.....
I've had the album for at least 6 months, and no doubt at one time it was probably one of my favourites, but as with Elephunk , I had to listen to it several times to get a real feel for what it was like, as supposed to just listening to the first few bars and deciding from that whether i would like the track or not, never a good idea. Some of the songs in the latter half of the album do start to sound a bit samey, but the overall sound of the album is different but original, with a slight eastern feel a times or a brassy feel with the James Brown song.
However, I would still recommend this album, even if it wasn't quite what i first expected, i still really like it.