Chris Schulz: Can the Black Eyed Peas please phunk off?

Hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas.

You've heard it, right? By now everyone should have. After all, it's the first new song in five years from the Black Eyed Peas, the creators of Fergie, the term "phunk", and, in I Gotta Feeling, one of the biggest worst songs of all time.

The new song from the Peas, released this week, is called Yesterday. Usually I'd tune in only to discover what new low will.i.am, apl.de.ap, Fergie and Taboo had managed to sink to.

Amazingly, this one breaks through the bottom of the barrel with a sledgehammer, then heads into uncharted territory.

That's saying something: this is a band that basically invented pop-rap; a band with so many songs with "phunk" in the title I've lost count; and a band that not only invited Fergie to become a full-time member, they asked her to sing the line, "What you gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk" while gyrating against the boot of a Cadillac.

Fergie isn't Yesterday's problem. Her lady lumps don't feature on the song, or the video. Instead, Yesterday has the group's original trio rapping in a record store, dancing behind their 2000 album, Bridging the Gap, giving shout-outs to hip-hop greats while jacking their album covers and their beats.

There's a fine line between paying tribute and pure theft. We could call Robin Thicke for confirmation, but I'm pretty sure this crosses it.

Sure, artists like De La Soul, NWA and A Tribe Called Quest deserve all the shout-outs they can get. They're rap pioneers. They started this shit. Everyone knows this, whether you're a hip-hop fan or not.

But the Black Eyed Peas haven't made a hip-hop song for more than a decade. Instead, they've committed crime after crime against music.

Yesterday doesn't forgive songs like Let's Get Retarded - how can it when it kicks off with Taboo, the kung fu-kicking silent member of the Peas, rapping the line: "We're going back to the past, retro blast" like he's performing karaoke to his mates?

Neither does it forgive The Beginning, the last Black Eyed Peas album that was so unlistenable I remember writing a one-star review then taking great delight in breaking its case apart in my hands.

The only part of Yesterday I agree with is the chorus. "I wanna to go back to yesterday" too, a time when Bridging the Gap was the last record the Black Eyed Peas had made; when Don't Phunk With My Heart didn't exist; and when Fergie didn't have a solo career that included a song that equated oral sex with London Bridge going up and down.

The Black Eyed Peas are trying to do hip-hop again. I only hope hip-hop says no.

- TimeOut