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Black Eyed Peas Vow Timberlake Clip Won't Get Dixie Chicks Treatment

Video for socially conscious song won't attack President Bush, Will.I.Am says.

by Corey Moss

LOS ANGELES — With the world growing weary of "weapons of mass destruction," "shock and awe" and "bunker busters," wordsmith Will.I.Am has coined a new term befitting the era of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"I don't wanna get Dixied with it," the Black Eyed Peas rapper said Thursday, explaining video plans for "Where's the Love," the group's collaboration with Justin Timberlake. "We don't want to play on what the song's really about, because they ain't going to play our sh-- if we bombard it like that. We going to be on some Dixie Chicks-type sh--."

The Dixie Chicks, of course, faced harsh criticism and suffered a slump in album sales after singer Natalie Maines told a London audience the group was embarrassed that George W. Bush was from Texas. Black Eyed Peas and Timberlake keep the president out of it, but they do address the world's problems in their upcoming single.

The video, which Will is directing next weekend in Los Angeles, may not be "Dixied," but Will said to expect some other "crazy sh--."

"It has to do with our own form of propaganda," he said at the Music Video Production Associations Awards. "The media and the government have their way of doing it. And we're going to inform the people what it is that we want them to know, how we think about life and how we live our life and what consumes our mind, socially. So it'll be a little of that and a little of us hanging out."

"Where's the Love" has yet to hit radio and video outlets, but the Black Eyed Peas are counting down the minutes.

"The world needs this song right now," Will said. "There's no song like that in urban music, pop music. We're saying some pretty deep stuff, some conscious stuff."

Black Eyed Peas and Timberlake will perform the song live together when the rap group joins the pop star on his Justified and Stripped Tour, which kicks off June 4 in Phoenix.

"I want to [perform it] during his show," Will said. "That'd be most powerful."

This report is provided by MTV News