For Will.i.am, there’s no place like… a hotel.
The Grammy-winning Black Eyed Peas musician, behind high-octane hits like “Boom Boom Pow” and “I Gotta Feelin’,” spoke at the AfroTech conference in Houston this week, talking about his second very high-paying gig, as sought after tech investor who is behind new companies like Fyi.AI.
He also shared with PEOPLE that despite the wealth he’s amassed, he’s still not ready to put down any real, real estate roots.
“As far as the idea of ’I’ve made it,’ I don’t think I’ve made it, because every milestone leads me to the next milestone,” said the star, 49. “I’m production it. I never had a house. I bought myself a studio apartment. I have my own office, but I stay in a hotel. I don’t have a house because I didn’t buy a house that says ‘I made it’.”
Will.i.am says U2, Earth, Wind & Fire and Talking Heads inspired Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Gotta Feeling’
The idea of home is something that has long been a motivator for the musician, who shared with the crowd at AfroTech that he grew up living in a South Los Angeles housing project.
“I remember my mom saying, ‘Wait, get dressed. Go over here to get our food stamps. Get in this line to get this cheese. When you’re in the project, that’s your reality,'” he said. “You go out, your best friend you grew up with isn’t with you anymore because he’s been shot and you want to dream differently – that’s where I get my ambition from.”
Will.i.am performs in Pennsylvania in August 2024.
Lisa Lake/Getty
Although he has continued to pursue music (the Black Eyed Peas are currently preparing for a residency in Las Vegas), the star has been busy investing in technology companies in recent years. He is now the founder and CEO or Fyi.AI, a new messenger and tool to simplify apps, making it a unique place on your device.
“You don’t need a thousand apps, especially when the apps don’t talk to each other,” Will.i.am explained. “With FYI everything is in one place, your news, your calendar, your work together. It may sound like a foreign concept, but in the end it will be a system.”
Although he has done well for himself with music and investments, he is still trying to get back to where it all started.
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Will.i.am in Los Angeles in August 2024.
Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty
“I go back to projects every weekend when I’m home,” he said. “And I’ve been doing that since I lived there.” And these days it brings with it valuable resources. The star was originally inspired to give back to her community in a big way after volunteering overseas in 2005 to help with the tsunami relief effort.
After that, “I thought, ‘Wow, there’s a tsunami happening in every neighborhood, every day, and it’s not a tsunami of water, it’s a tsunami of no opportunity, neglect, bad food, bad zoning. I thought, ‘Why don’t I give back to my neighborhood?'”
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will.i.am speaks at WSJ’s Journal House in Cannes in June 2024.
Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal
That experience and a popular educational documentary Waiting for Supermaninspired the star to use his resources and connections to bring robotics classes and college access programs to his struggling neighborhood schools.
He thought, “If I marry those two things, these kids will graduate from college with a job waiting for them, not graduate from college with debt and a degree,” he said. Now the programs take place in more than 500 schools. “Here we are, and we have kids now graduating from Stanford and Brown and Dartmouth.”
It’s a badge of honor for the musician and entrepreneur, who is still chasing his futuristic dream home. “When I get it that house,” he said, “then I succeeded.”
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Source: HIS Education