Former Black Eyed Peas singer reacts to will.i.am's claim about group 'not being Black'

Original Black Eyed Peas singer Kim Hill gave her two cents regarding will.i.am’s claim about the group not being "considered Black".

In an interview with Wyclef Jean, will.i.am expressed his views about the group not being considered Black despite him being part of the community.

He said that the lines between genres have been so well defined that doing anything outside of the norm is no longer considered Black.

"That’s just a thing that we suffer from all the time. When you think of Jazz, you no longer think of Black anymore," he said.

"When you think of Rock n’ Roll, you don’t think of Black anymore. All that, I don’t know why we have that. When you think of even country, you don’t think of Black. A lot of the things that we create and we invent, we dispose of or it gets stolen from us to the point where it’s no association to its origins."

The Where Is The Love hit maker added that another reason behind not being included in the Black community was their astronomical success.

"When you think of — like, I’m a Black dude, but when you think of Black Eyed Peas, we got so big that… and it hurts, it still hurts a little bit that we’re not considered a Black group because we got that big. ‘And when you think of Black Eyed Peas, you don’t think of — it’s no longer urban or Black culture, which is…it’s not good for the Black community that Black Eyed Peas is not looked at as a Black group because we’ve had international success."

"That should be credited to the Black community more so than letting it be adopted," he said.

Kim took to an Instagram video and responded to her former band mate's view.

"Why I’m coming on camera and addressing you is because for you to make that statement as if the onus is on the Black community to celebrate you and the band when you didn’t celebrate us," she said.

"It’s almost like there’s this cultural smudging. And for the record, when my doc got on YouTube — and it’s at, I don’t know, like 5.4 million views with… almost 19,000 comments— the majority of those comments that come from Black women clearly say it feels like cultural smudging."