The APL Song

Black Eyed Peas, 2004

Black Eyed Peas are a West Coast pop, rap, and hip-hop group founded by will.i.am, Apl.de.ap, and Taboo. Fergie joined the group in 2003 and was replaced by Nicole Scherzinger in 2018. The group was popular in the underground club scene in California in the 1990s and rose to international fame following the addition of Fergie. Their music is often described as innovative and experimental due to its mixing of the genres of hip-hop, R&B, house, EDM, and pop music. The group is often noted for its ethnic diversity. Taboo is of Mexican descent, Apl.de.ap was born in the Phillipines, and will.i.am is African American.

The Black Eyed Peas

"The APL Song" was written by Allan Pineda Lindo (Apl.de.ap), who was born in 1974 in Angeles City in the Philippines. His father was a Black American soldier who left the Philippines shortly after his birth, and his mother raised seven children as a single parent. He was sponsored by an American named Joe Hudgens, who brought him to the United States to undergo treatment for an eye condition. Pineda Lindo agreed to be adopted by Hudgens and moved to Los Angeles, where he hoped to earn money to send back to his family in the Philippines. Shortly after moving, he began rapping with will.i.am.

"The APL Song" is an autobiographical song. In the first verse Pineda Lindo remembers the difficulties of growing up in the Philippines. In verse two he raps about his return home for the first time since he was fourteen and notes how difficult life in the Philippines is for his family. The song's Tagalog hook is borrowed from the song "Balita" (News), a 1979 song by the Filipino folk-rock group Asin. "Balita" protested the resettlement of northern Filipinos into the southern regions of the country, which had been promised to its Muslim inhabitants. This was part of an ongoing marginalization of Muslim Filipinos, begun under Spanish and US colonial rule and then continued under President Ferdinand Marcos. This marginalization contributed to the difficult conditions that led to Pineda Lindo's immigration to the United States.

Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay