Black Eyed Peas to release new album, 'I Gotta Feeling' reaches six million downloads

August 5, 2010

US hip hop group Black Eyed Peas has announced that it is almost finished with its new studio album, The Beginning. The group's leader and producer, will.i.am (William James Adams, Jr.), says that the recording "symbolizes growth, new beginnings and starts, fresh new perspective. It's a positive, feel-good [album] at the time where there's question marks and uncertainty. People want to be reminded that it's going to be all right."

The Beginning is the group's sixth studio album and is set to be released by the end of the year. It comes one year after the release of multiplatinum The E.N.D. and one of its hit singles "I Gotta Feeling".

"I Gotta Feeling" officially became the most downloaded digital song last Friday, having reached six million legal digital downloads. Released in June 2009, the song topped the charts for fourteen weeks. iTunes still lists the song as the bestselling of all time, and its music video on YouTube has reached approximately 38 million views.

Will.i.am said of the milestone, "We came out in '98 and our career, if you would look at it on chart, there's no dips in it. For our career to still be healthy and vibrant and doing things like 6 million downloads, it's pretty significant."