Black Eyed Peas-Meet Me Halfway

As a regionally semi-famous professional playlister I encounter a lot of requests for extremely cheesy songs (like "Womanizer" or "Poker face") from drunk chicks. This tends to make what would otherwise be an extremely tasteful playlist look like the itunes top 10 pop chart. I relent to these requests for one reason: people dance to them. That's really what it's all about: creating a fun environment where everyone gets laid...I'm not trying to convince the crowd that Bitches Brew is truly a milestone of jazz fusion. That said, I download alot of 'pop' music in order to "please the crowd". Sometimes I end up un-ironically liking the stuff I download, for whatever reason. One such song is the new song from the Black Eyed Peas called "Meet Me Halfway". It's a pop song through and through...a strong easily relatable romantic sentiment is expressed, it's got an extremely catchy hook, and its unique enough sonically to stand out (but not too much to be weird), and its got a propulsive steady beat that makes it easy to gyrate to.
The video for the song clearly was created with a strong budget and although the story is stupid (as is usual for music videos), the visuals are striking. Excellent costumes, lush backgrounds, and cool camera shots. Basically its the Avatar of music videos.

All of this causes me to re-evaluate the role of The Black Eyed Peas in modern music. How did they transgress from a roots hip-hop group to the modern day answer to C&C Music Factory? The an$wer is probably not a$ hard to figure out a$ one might think...their financial success is probably enough to justify this evolution. To contrast where they are at now, I've provided the video for their song "Joints&Jams" off of their first album Behind the Front.