Who Is Kim Hill? Unpacking the Black Eyed Peas' Origins and The Female Construct

Written by Daphne Bryant

Image courtesy of Almost Famous

The Black Eyed Peas were one of those groups that were always kind of around growing up. I knew them for songs like“ I Gotta Feeling”,“ Boom Boom Pow”,“ Rock That Body” and so on. You know, those robotic, semi-annoying party tracks that permeated the late 2000s and early 2010s; that kind of sound was everywhere, and The Black Eyed Peas were leading the charge.

I never knew how they started. I didn’t know until I saw Kim Hill’s episode of Almost Famous, an Op-Docs series of short films directed by Ben Proudfoot, featuring people who nearly made history only to fall short. The headline had a pretty damn good hook:“ I Was in The Black Eyed Peas. Then I Quit.” The first time the suggested video popped up on my YouTube I took one good, hard look at the beautiful black woman in the thumbnail, someone I had never seen before in my life, and figured it was worth the watch.

For those of you unfamiliar, Kim Hill is a talented singer and songwriter, who originally moved to LA in the mid-1990s in pursuit of a record deal. While there she met a young rapper named will.i.am, who had a rising underground hip-hop crew called The Black Eyed Peas. The words“ underground hip-hop crew” were not ones I’d use to describe The Black Eyed Peas, at least not the ones I knew, but I kept watching.

It’s safe to say that my ears (and eyes) were blown. The Black Eyed Peas used to be so cool. Like real and raw, striking lyricism, progressive 90s hip hop, bomb AF, down-to-earth, truth-speaking, streetwear-wearing, my kind of music cool. The alternative hip hop trio consisted of will.i.am, apl.de.ap, and Taboo, all young men of color from East LA, and the music they made was the complete opposite of gangsta rap, which had been popularized in the same decade. While gangsta rap is a genre I respect and even listen to, it is also misogynistic, degrading, and aggressive. What The Black Eyed Peas were doing back then, their brand of hip hop, was different. It was on par with groups such as The Fugees, and Kim Hill, a girl who sang and spoke from the soul, was the perfect addition.

For a while, they were living the dream. They rocked House of Blues and performed on Soul Train. They opened for artists like Eminem, No Doubt and Outkast. They were successful in their own right, but when The Black Eyed Peas found themselves under new management in 2000, things started to change.

Pressure sunk in. Interscope and A&M Records wanted The Black Eyed Peas to“ soften up” their image and adopt something more commercial. That’s the thing about conscious hip hop: if you’re a fan you know that it’s not as easily digestible as people might think. The lyrics are packed ten layers deep; there is a greater, bigger message beyond our reality, and that might be cool but it doesn’t sell pop kind of records. That kind of stardom was never something that mattered to Hill. She was lucky; she had the financial means and connections to find other work if music didn’t work out, and never thought there’d come a day when outside forces would try and change her artistry.

When she was a part of The Black Eyed Peas, Hill had that lowkey and charming aura, a type of musicality that wasn’t“ conventionally” sexy. What I mean to say is, she wasn’t giving us hot girl Megan Thee Stallion realness, and that’s what Interscope and A&M Records wanted from her. They wanted her sex. I don’t mean for that to come off crude, it’s just the truth; the executives, these higher-ups at their record label, were serious about objectifying Hill. At one point she was asked to grind in a bathing suit on will.i.am, someone who was a brother-like figure to her. It was becoming less and less about the music, that spiritual thing that had drawn Hill to The Black Eyed Peas, and more and more about how she looked. Why? We know why.

Image courtesy of Almost Famous

Sex sells.“ The tug of war was about my sexuality, and how much of that I was willing to literally strip down,” confirms Hill in the doc. She never wanted to be sexualized in or by her music, so she ended up quitting the band and pursuing a solo career of her own. Shortly after Hill left she was replaced by Fergie, who wasn’t nearly as big at the time. She was originally invited by will.i.am to try out for the song “Shut Up”, secured the gig, bonded with the trio and went on to record five additional songs on the album. Fergie was eventually offered a permanent spot with The Black Eyed Peas, and as I’m sure you can guess critics ate it up:“ [The Black Eyed Peas has] hired a blond bombshell named Stacy“ Fergie” Ferguson and [given] up their pursuit of backpack-rapper cred” wrote Jody Rosen in a positive Rolling Stone review. The group rose to international fame once they added Fergie and took on the more futuristic sound that they’re now known for. Hill watched it all unfold from the sidelines.

“The tug of war was about my sexuality, and how much of that I was willing to literally strip down.”

To this day Fergie and Hill have never met, but there was something Hill said at the end of the mini doc that really stuck with me:“ If [Fergie and I] ever met it would probably be an embrace with a hug and a deep breath, because I think we just kind of know something about being that female, and that construct, and that’s tough.” There. That became the real subject, the real interest for me and this article: The Female Construct. 

Let’s break it down.“ Female construct” or the“ construct of femininity” refers to qualities associated with women, all of which are shaped by societal expectations and cultural norms. If you stay at home, cook and clean, or wear makeup and form-fitting dresses every time you go out, that won’t actually make you a“ woman.” The construct of femininity isn’t really about biology, it’s about gender, which is a construct in the first place. It’s about behaviors, roles and characteristics that society has deemed“ feminine” or“ womanly”, and it’s all a bunch of bullshit.

That’s not to say that I, or you, or anyone, can’t love being a woman and enjoy all of those associated qualities. Like, I love pink and I love being treated like a princess, and I do NOT want to go to war or throw a football. That’s just me though. Someone else with the same“ biology” or  gender identity as me might fuck with the color blue. They might play sports (shocking)! They might wear masculine clothes and do“ traditionally masculine” things, like open the car door, pay for dinner and be dominant in bed. Does that make them any less woman? No.

But in a world where the Fergie image is considered more palatable than the Kim Hill one, my girl Hill never stood a chance. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie said it best: us ladies, we have to be seductive but not too slutty that we come off like a skank, but sexy enough that we get a guy’s attention, but not so sexy that we get other guys’ attention. Hot, gorgeous, fun, but demure and just out of reach. It’s an impossible line to toe, one that feels especially combative in the music business, where women get exiled for as my mother would say“ keeping it cute.” 

“Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie said it best: us ladies, we have to be seductive but not too slutty that we come off like a skank, but sexy enough that we get a guy’s attention, but not so sexy that we get other guys’ attention. Hot, gorgeous, fun, but demure and just out of reach.”

While there is certainly something liberating about twerkin’ in a Phatty girl halter top there is also something liberating about music that is not sexual at all. Hill was gorgeous, yes, but she wasn’t easy to sexualize. She colored outside of the lines and didn’t fit the Female Construct, and neither did her music. That’s why Hill quit The Black Eyed Peas, and she missed out on all of the global fame and attention the group received after.

Image courtesy of Hot New Hip Hop

Throughout the Almost Famous video Hill spoke lovingly about the group and has had mostly good things to say online, though she has gripes unrelated to gender.“ You want the [black] community to validate you and you put a white girl in [my] place” said Hill in response to an interview will.i.am did, where he expressed his frustration over The Black Eyed Peas not being considered a black or urban group. There are layers to this statement, and I think Hill is right in critiquing his mindset. How could The Black Eyed Peas be regarded as a black group, when their music no longer reflects the Native Tongue movement and their leading lady doesn’t have brown skin, when their songs are blasted in frat basements instead of on the street? Almost everything in the mainstream music industry is strategic, so the addition of Fergie and the white savior rhetoric that ruled the group’s reviews at the time is not to be overlooked. It would be foolish to ignore the Eurocentric beauty standards that painted Fergie in such a bright light at the height of The Black Eyed Peas’ career. I feel the ned to acknowledge that her white womanhood was considered more palatable than Hill’s black one.

I also can’t help feeling bitter for Hill, and all of the women who were put on the chopping block for challenging the construct of femininity. Tori Kelly is one of the best vocalists of our generation, but she sings-raps lyrics like“ maybe I could sell out shows without taking off my clothes”, and will never be on your housewarming party playlist. She seems happy, and is fairly well known, but she’s not topping the charts the way more sexually open artists are.

Image courtesy of Rolling Stone

I think at the end of the day we all do what’s best for us. As a girl raised Southern Baptist, I was happy to move out, unpack and unlearn my own issues with sexuality. Artists like Sexyy Red, GloRilla, Nicki Minaj, etc., truly are doing so much for women in hip hop (especially black women) and they have done so much for me. As Arisa Thomas states in her The Federalist article,“ it’s empowering to see women embracing and taking back their sexuality after decades of explicit music targeting them; instead of being an accessory and afterthought in a song, they bring women’s pleasure to the forefront.” I really believe that. I’m grateful for that. Because of female artists who talk openly about sex (amongst other things), I am more forthcoming than ever about being gay and about being a freak. I proudly wear bikini tops to the club and whine on stage, and I do it all while jamming to the hottest radio hits. However, I still love my underground baddies, my nonconformist angels, those“ it’s silly when girls sell their souls because it’s in” artists, the musicians that really make me think. I feel for them, because I’m not sure how far I’d be willing to go either, especially if it’s a record label and not my own brain telling me how to move, act, pose and dance.

Someone like Kim Hill or Tori Kelly will struggle in this industry because they challenge the Female Construct in a different way. As solo artists they might never have a #1 single on The Billboard Hot 100, and maybe that’s okay. At least in my playlists, there’s room and appreciation for both kinds of artistry, and for both sides of femininity.