December 8th – Taboo’s 3 lines in ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’

Welcome to Taboo in Focus, where we’re looking at Taboo’s only 3 lines from the pop hit ‘Don’t Phunk With My Heart’ with them Black Eyed Peas, the Black Eyed Peas.

Baby Girl you make me feel

You know you make me feel so real

I love you more than sex appeal

I want today to focus on the much talked about third line, here. First thing to note, the third line is the last line, in this case. Will.I.Am cuts Taboo off before he gets to finish his famous ‘eel’ quadruplet. Why does Will.I.Am cut Taboo off? What was he going to tell us? Perhaps Will.I.Am was afraid of what Taboo might say...

There are literally hundreds of books about what this forth line might have been, but, for today, we’ll just take it as an unresolved mystery, like the Bermuda Triangle and who really shot Diana. Instead, let’s just look at that third line itself and see what it tells us about a man we’ve come to know as ‘in the Black Eyed Peas’.

“I love you more than sex appeal”

So, we can interpret this line in any one of eight, widely accepted, ways;

1. 1. Taboo loves this girl, let’s call her Cheryl, more than he loves sex appeal.

2. 2. Taboo loves this girl, let’s call her Cheryl, more than sex appeal loves this girl, let’s call her Cheryl.

3. 3. Taboo loves this girl, let’s call her up, more than he loves sex her appeal.

4. 4. Taboo loves the insurance firm ‘More Than’, and begins to list the qualities he appreciates in it. (perhaps the forth line would have gone on to list ‘reasonable APR’ and ‘polite phone manner’)

5. 5. Taboo states only that he loves, in general, and then tells the girl, let’s call her name, that she is, herself, more than sex appeal.

6. 6. Similar to 4. Taboo loves this girl, let’s then, more than he loves sex, and begins to list the gifts he would give her to prove this. ‘A peel, an aga, some Pogz...’

7. 7. Taboo loves this girl, more than he appreciates her sex appeal. In this interpretation, it can be taken as a veiled insult (look out, Fergie!)

8. 8. Taboo introduces himself as ‘love’, describes the girl as ‘more’, mispronounces the word ‘then’, and asks for six apples in a French accent.

Logically, let’s go with the 8^th interpretation. We can conclude that Taboo is pretty weird, sure, but can we conclude literally anything else? Well, if you accept the 8^th interpretation (the Octavian School), then no.