will.i.am has released hit after hit with The Black Eyed Peas but amidst studio and songwriting sessions, he’s also dedicated to enriching other passions. Blending his love for tech and music, the renowned artist now has his sights on innovation and disruption.
With a recently announced partnership with LG, will.i.am’s wildest dreams are now taking flight. Alongside the electronics and home appliances brand, he’s developed a line of audio products bolstered with signature sound and AI versatility. Taking it one step further, each of these new LG xboom products will connect to his RAiDiO.FYI platform, a venture that he calls his “ultimate stunt.”
Hypebeast sat down with will.i.am at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, where the LG XBOOM line was unveiled. We explored the compact, AI audio-balanced products and dove into his innovative platform, RAiDiO.FYI.
Hypebeast: This partnership with LG was announced in early December. How does this new endeavor take your passion for music and sound one step further?
will.i.am: LG is beyond, as far as what they make and who they make stuff for. If you hop into a Mercedes EQS and you see that huge hyperscreen, that screen is made by LG. They make a lot of the stuff that we engage with in society. So to be rocking with LG, with xboom, which is a family of audio products, is like a dream come true. I mean, I’ve tried to do consumer electronics in the past on my own, after we had success selling Beats to Apple. But to be plugged into a mothership like LG — yo, what?! Like I said, it’s a dream come true.
What obstacles or challenges do you seek to address when it comes to the typical listening experience through your innovative, artistic outlook?
Well, this partnership couldn’t have come at a more perfect time because it’s around the time that we’ve been developing RAiDiO.FYI — which is a reimagination of the radio experience that really turns it on its head, allowing folks to have deep conversations across any subject that they’re interested in. In the format of something that we’ve been familiar with our whole lives. And that is radio. Radio — what does it do? It tells you local information, tells you weather, traffic conditions, what’s popping off in your city. Sometimes it tells you breaking news of what’s happening around the world. But if you had questions on any of that stuff, you had to call up and wait in a long line. But that host only could talk to one person at a time.
In this case, our AI host can talk to millions of people at the same time. And in no way is this going to threaten a field and a community that exists within a product that I love — traditional radio. Radio changed my life. We’re not trying to undo or dismantle radio; we just want to transform it. So now, traditional stations could have a sister AI station and we can add a new cast member to traditional radio stations. So if there are four people on a radio show, you could have four people on a radio show, plus a new type of experience where you’re bantering with AI for a part of that show. I came up with that whole vision. We’re going to deploy RAiDiO.FYI worldwide.
That growth without changing the heart of the product is what you’re doing with xboom as well. What characterizes and elevates the xboom signature sound, compared to other sound experiences?
A speaker speaks to you, but the moment you speak back to the speaker, then you’re having a conversation. There’s no dialogue with your traditional speakers. We know we have some speakers developed in the recent past where you can give it a command and it could play a song. Right? But you’re not bantering. You’re not like, ‘Hey, wait, what did you say there? Who played drums on that? Who produced that song?’ And now that’s possible. As a songwriter — putting my other hat on — that means when I finish a song, I need to go and talk to my persona or AI agent and give it more information or data about that lyric because now I know these experiences are going to happen. I like that it allows somebody’s mind to wrap itself around the information so they understand in more color and detail. A song is not just a song. A song is a political rally. A song is social commentary. It’s telling you what’s happening in the world. It’s telling you what’s happening to somebody’s heart. People usually have an internal conversation with songs anyway, but their imagination is doing all the work. Now, it’s not just their imagination.
And that’s the power of RAiDiO.FYI. We’re dimensionalizing your relationship with information and entertainment. Not only that, but people are going to be able to have these deep relationships with these personas that represent the things they love. Our product is an ecosystem for brands, media outlets, teams and schools or professors that want to build stations.
How do your entrepreneurial projects connect to your philanthropic pursuits?
What’s beautiful about this thing that we’re doing with FYI.AI and our RAiDiO.FYI is that I’m from the inner city. This whole ecosystem comes from inner city folks. Not the other way around. Networking through music really allowed me to go around the world and meet folks. But it’s not like everything is glitz and glam and success. Sometimes you miss out. Sometimes you’re early and you put things to market and they don’t work. And then you risk people judging you on social media. But that don’t stop me. You know how many times I wrote a song and tried to get a record deal back in the day? And how many times they told me no to a record deal? Not every song’s a smash, but “I Gotta Feeling” — I don’t care what you say, that song is a smash [laughs].
I know that if things don’t go right, because my music career is so public-facing, I run the risk of people being judgemental. But who cares? The reason I can say “Who cares?” with so much conviction is because I do things for a different reason. I’m not doing things for ‘come-upskis’ or to stack paper. I’m doing my entrepreneurial work in consumer electronics because it mirrors my philanthropic work.
Can you dive more into that philanthropic work and how it brought you here, to a partnership like this with LG?
In 2008, I started my afterschool program. It started off super simple, with adopting a junior high schooler and guiding them down a path with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skillsets. I thought, ‘The world’s gonna be more and more technological.’ I was blessed to get out of the projects making music, but I can’t say there’s going to be the same opportunities. I need kids who come from the same communities that I come from to have other pathways to success.
So I went to my neighborhood, I was like, ‘Yo, let’s get this place up to speed with the direction the world is going.’ I started a small class of 65 students. Now we serve a little over 15,000 with robotic skillsets and some computer science skillsets. We’ve sent kids to Dartmouth, Brown, Stanford, CalTech, and so much more. That’s what’s driving my entrepreneurial pursuits. Other folks need to see what we’re capable of. If Willie could do it, they can. I’m not going to stop until I achieve my dream, which is to build a campus of my own. I’ve been preparing for that since 2008. So this LG partnership just validates this cross-collaborative, cross-disciplinary venture that we’re on. It’s poetic and — wow, what a journey it’s been.
Again, you’re converging many of these worlds that don’t typically mesh together in people’s minds. What are you most excited for users to experience or to learn with this range of products?
RAiDiO.FYI for sure. At the level of companies like LG, everything is great. It’s gotten to that point where you really can’t see the difference when we’re talking about these powerhouse brands. So what is that new difference? The new difference is an emotional connection. How do they make you feel? So that’s what I want to do with xboom. We want people to feel, and they’re going to feel when they engage and dive deep into discussions and subjects that they’re passionate about. And the personas that we build, they’re not just some AI robotic voice. They’re going to represent culture because they’re going to be made by people from those cultures. From there, my dream is to get RAiDiO in LG’s beautiful TVs. I want to expand people’s knowledge and entertain them along the way. That’s the main goal with all of this. So it all starts with xboom. Then I’m hoping to expand to automobiles. And when we do that — I’ll be over here like the Black Tony Stark. Don’t trip! [laughs].
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The post We Sat Down With will.i.am to Talk Entrepreneurship, Tech and His new LG xboom Line appeared first on Hypebeast.
