will.i.am is back and ready to show his “East LA” roots in his new single with Taboo. He sits down to share his favorite spots in the city, why he wrote the song and decided to bring Taboo on, the “Rock That Body” viral resurgence, sampling Michael Jackson’s music, his thoughts on current immigration issues and more.

What do you think of the new single? Let us know in the comments!

will.i.am: What made me want to do a solo project right now? I was going through my hard drive, and I just saw all this music, this unreleased stuff. I started thinking of AI, I’m like, I need to get this stuff out before people get just accustomed to AI and they forget about human, fully human made. I just wanted to put out music. So I got like three albums coming, three albums worth. That’s just me by myself. Then I got Black Eyed Peas stuff.

But yeah, so this is the first installment of the things that I got coming. I’m from Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, predominantly Mexican neighborhood. So I was born and raised where my mom is raised. I just wanted to flip that particular part of the song that says “East LA” and I wanted to put it on repeat and then build around East LA and show some love to the community that I come from, that I was born and raised in, especially now with all that’s happening with immigration issues and people that I grew up with, their parents, their kids, threatened, worried, anxiety.

I went back to my neighborhood after I had some success with the Black Eyed Peas and I started my school, an after school program, teaching kids computer science, robotics, college prep. We’ve had 1000s of kids graduate. We’ve sent kids to Dartmouth, to Brown, to Stanford, to USC, UCLA. Their dedication and consistency and audaciousness, ambition is proof that folks that come from another country can come work hard and apply themselves. There wouldn’t be a Jeff Bezos if it wasn’t for, you know, Michael Bezos, a Cuban migrant who made an amazing life for himself, raised someone that wasn’t his, you know, blood that became a Jeff Bezos. 

Keep watching for more!