Big helping of the Peas

Wherever you’ve turned in 2005, the Black Eyed Peas have been there.

They’ve performed at the Grammy Awards, the Super Bowl, a tsunami-aid benefit in Malaysia and Vanity Fair’s Oscar party. And they hosted their own tsunami-relief show in Los Angeles with Justin Timberlake, James Brown, Macy Gray and Carlos Santana, among others.

Making the scene -- no, being the scene -- has been de rigueur for the hip-hop ensemble since their 2003 breakthrough album, “Elephunk,” which has sold 7 1/2 million copies, propelled them from L.A.’s underground scene to pop stardom.

With “Monkey Business,” the follow-up to “Elephunk,” released this week, the group’s hectic pace doesn’t figure to slow. In fact, the full-time members of the Peas -- Will.I.Am (William Adams) Fergie (Stacy Ferguson), Taboo (Jaime Gomez), and apl.de.ap (Allen Pineda) -- take pride in the fact they have a strong work ethic.

“We’re still hungry,” Fergie says. “We know about this business and how it could all go away, so it’s really important for us to give 110% every show.”

Not until two weeks before the release of “Monkey Business” did Will allow himself a moment of satisfaction. “We were in Paris driving around listening to the album and looking at the package,” he says. “I was thinking about the hard work, the traveling, where some of these songs were written and recorded and listening to our record, and I was just like, ‘Yeah, we’re straight.’ ”

The album begins with a sample of surf guitar king Dick Dale in the energetic “Pump It” and ends with a sample of Sting’s “Englishman in New York” (including newly recorded vocals by Sting) on the elegant advocacy for harmony “Union.” In between is fodder for a lot of booty-shaking, including “Disco Club” and “My Humps.”

“A lot of the recording was done when we were in London going to clubs,” Will says.

Adds Pineda: “Also, we were doing a lot of touring, so the energy that we got on stage through the people kind of went in the studio.”

It’s an energy that serves the group well in showbiz circles.

“They are one of the only bands I’ve seen play a Hollywood party where everybody goes crazy,” says Lara Morgenson, an editor at E! Online who witnessed the Peas perform last summer at a celebrity-laden party for T-Mobile. “They completely give it their all.”

That attitude earned the respect of peers and predecessors alike -- as evidenced by collaborations on “Monkey Business” with longtime friend Timberlake, Sting and James Brown. The band also earned slots later this year as the opening act for the Dave Matthews Band and the Rolling Stones on some dates of those groups’ tours.

“Those guys can have anybody open for them,” Will says of the Stones. “And here we are opening for them. It’s dope and it’s scary. This is right up there next to the Super Bowl.”

(A July tour with mostly Canadian dates brings the Peas back to the Greek Theatre on July 28.)

Backstage in L.A. at the Peas-hosted benefit for tsunami relief back in February, Brown -- who appears on the funkadelic “They Don’t Want Music,” a song that bridges the musical generation gap -- was asked why he agreed to collaborate with the group.

“I like Will because he’s smart, a very intelligent young man,” Brown says. “You teach him something and he does it right away.”

One valuable lesson Will learned over the band’s 10-year run is how important it is to remain true to yourself. The band took that philosophy into both the writing and recording of the new album.

“Going in to write ‘Monkey Business,’ now as a quartet, the mindset that we had was let’s go in there and have a good time, have fun and try to capture our experiences with doing ‘Elephunk,’ ” Will says. “It wasn’t like, ‘Yo, let’s do this stuff one more time, sell 20 million records.’ As soon as that’s the mind set, you’re dead.

“This record still had to feel, for us, like those same cats that are approachable. Just because we sold records we ain’t gonna have a bunch of goons that are gonna separate us from the people.”

True to that belief, the band returns to its hip-hop roots on “Like That,” a song that incorporates the talents of A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip, Cee-Lo, Talib Kweli and John Legend. “I listened to the record and I was like, ‘Wow, what’s the record missing?’ It’s missing the metaphorical, lyrical MC,” Will says.

Adds Taboo: “Basically where we came from, like going to open mikes and expressing that back in the day.”

Despite all of the places they’ve been -- Sting’s home, a palace in Malaysia, around the world -- Will has not forgotten the band’s origins.

Thinking back to getting ready the first time the band played the Grammys, in 2004, he recalls, “I was putting my jacket on and I looked over to [Pineda], and he was putting his jacket on. The last time we put our jackets on, like suit jackets, was when we were going to church.

“And then I started thinking, like, ‘Wow, we came a long way, dude, from going to church, going to the mall, getting kicked out for dancing by the clock in the Glendale Galleria. This has been a ... long journey.’ ”

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Steve Baltin can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.