The Beginning is the sixth studio album by American hip hop group The Black Eyed Peas. The album was released on November 26, 2010 by Universal Music. The lead single, "The Time (Dirty Bit)", was released on November 9, 2010. The album debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 119,000 copies in the United States.
On June 6, 2010, the band confirmed that they were working on a new album in an interview for The Big Issue. The album was described as a sequel to The E.N.D. will.i.am announced that the new album, which "symbolizes growth, new beginnings, and starts a fresh new perspective," will be titled The Beginning and was released on November 30, 2010. The album was officially announced in a press release on October 26, 2010.
Many singles were made available as promotional releases for the album. The first, "Do It Like This", was released on November 15, 2010, and the second, "Light Up the Night", on November 22, 2010. The Beginning was a part of Oprah's Favorite Things for 2010. The audience was given the album 11 days before its official release. A stadium concert tour is planned starting after February 2011. Having previously performed at stadiums on the South American leg of The E.N.D. World Tour will.i.am revealed he thought stadiums would be a more ideal.
The album debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 119,000 copies in the United States. It is their third album to chart inside the top ten, but their lowest charting album since Elephunk, which peaked at number 14 in 2003. In the United Kingdom, the album debuted at number 17 selling 34,006 copies. Normally, selling over 30,000 copies is enough to get an album into the Top 3 or even the top spot however, due the usual strong competition in the autumn it failed to debut in the top ten however due to a performance on The X Factor it rose 8 places to number 9 and since spent 3 weeks in the top ten. In Canada, it debuted at number two selling 27,400 copies in its first week, being kept of the top spot by a margin of 200 copies behind Susan Boyle's The Gift. The album debuted at number one in France, selling 35,653 copies in its first week. It is The Black Eyed Peas' third consecutive number-one album in the country.
In Germany, the album debuted at No. 5 and started slowly to fall down. In its 3rd week, the album was at No. 9 but could jump to No. 7 the following week. Thanks to the success of the single The Time (Dirty Bit), the album rose from No. 7 to No. 2 in its fifth week, the album's peak position.
The Beginning received generally mixed reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 47, based on 17 reviews, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".
Monica Herrera wrote for Billboard that "the music is expertly produced, but problems arise when Will.i.am claims the same of his wordplay. On the track "Don't Stop the Party," he chest-thumps, "Kill you with my lyricals/Call me verbal criminal." It's a silly boast for an artist who clearly focuses on beats over rhymes, and is probably better off for it." Kevin O'Donnell of Spin described the album as "one of the year's wildest sonic stews" and concluded "Pop's reigning peddlers of dumb fun are actually starting to sound stylishly avant-garde on their sixth album." The Guardian's Caroline Sullivan gave the album 3 out of 5 stars calling it "upscale hip-pop" and said that "the Black Eyed Peas have created an album similar to 2009's enormously successful The END, but with more Auto-Tune and less input from the wonderful Fergie." Rolling Stone reviewer Jon Dolan viewed that the album "largely picks up where The E.N.D. left off" and felt that "they give themselves over more fully than ever to the groove palette of club culture, stirring up electro funk, Euro-trance and classic disco". John Bush of Allmusic gave the album 2 out of 5 stars, and noted that although David Guetta only appears on one track "his production job for 2009’s “I Gotta Feeling” casts a long shadow on this record of don’t-stop-the-party jams and club-life tracks."
Entertainment Weekly writer Simon Vozick-Levinson gave the album a very positive review and stated "The Beginning wisely sticks with the heavier electronic beats they began importing from European clubs for The E.N.D. — a key ingredient that transformed the Black Eyed Peas from merely major stars to arguably the biggest chart act going Every song is piled high with sticky pop melodies, slick hip-hop rhythms, bright synth parts, and vocals that have been diced and processed to high heaven, all furthering the goal of maximum catchiness." Greg Kot of Chicago Tribune gave the album 1.5 out of 4 stars and called it "the quartet’s tamest, most hook-deprived album in the Fergie era" and stated "the music’s reliance on rhythmic and lyrical repetition (as opposed to progression and surprise) becomes wearying." In his review for The Independent, Andy Gill wrote "It's a textbook blend of the over-familiar and the electronically treated, though their use of auto-tune and digital-stutter vocal effects is a touch more restrained than usual. From there on, the aspect never extends beyond the dancefloor, with martial synth-stomp riffs, spartan electro beats and loping bass grooves driving tracks". Ben Ratliff of The New York Times gave the album a negative review and noted it similarities with its predecessor, The E.N.D. with few differences, "less of Fergie’s actressy, un-Autotuned belting (too bad about that), bolder two-step techno beats, more heavily draped synthesizer tones and a fascination with late ’70s and early ’80s pop radio." and found the lyrics "soggy" and "cynical". musicOMH writer Luke Winkie stated that "will.i.am's productions sound like the bare minimum one could throw together and call a beat, usually encompassed by a simplified drum sequence and a buzzsaw synth turned up to the red and repeated long enough for DJs to make their paycheck" and wrote "the band has a knack of elongating their elementally good ideas into preposterously tiresome compositions".