After owning the charts with a steady stream of anthems, Los Angeles' hip-hop assembly Black Eyed Peas checked out for a little hiatus in 2011.
"We shouldn't have took a break, but we did," says Taboo, "We all did individual projects..."
Solo material was released, will.i.am became a familiar face on the small screen in The Voice, and so on, and so forth.
But in 2014, Taboo's creativity ground to a halt with a devastating diagnosis; He had testicular cancer.
"I pretty much fought for my life. I was doing chemotherapy and was not in any condition to even care about music or work. I was basically trying to stay alive to take care of my wife and my kids.
"Sometimes when you are doing chemotherapy you feel like you are alone, because you start seeing changes in yourself - it happened to me; I lost my hair, I lost my eyebrows, and started getting skinny, pale and yellow," he says, "When you are doing chemo five days a week, six hours a day, it's very fatiguing and mentally draining."
It was a long, and hard battle, but one which thankfully he won, and today Taboo is standing up and speaking out to help others.
"It's one thing to have a doctor talking, but another thing having a survivor speaking on ways to help people get through it and prevention, especially with the youth because I am part of pop culture.
"I would especially like to talk to the youth and let them know that it's important to get checked - even if you catch the first benign lump or mass, you are able to take care of that so that you don't have to have your testicle removed, or go through chemotherapy the way that I did because it was already too late."
It was while Taboo's healing and rehabiltiation was ongoing that the band dared to start thinking about getting back to work.
"will.i.am and apl became part of my daily healing, alongside my family and friends, and I was able to start thinking about ways to get back on stage, because I wanted to do the thing I loved doing."
Will shared details of a graphic novel he had been working on, called Masters of the Sun: "It was beautiful, the amazing story, and the illustration."
Confident they would be knocked out by the page-turner, Taboo hooked up a meeting with the iconic Marvel brand. They loved it.
They had an augmented reality and virtual reality components in place, and Academy Award winning composer Hans Zimmer scored the graphic novel.
That book gave rise to the first Black Eyes Peas album in eight years; also titled Masters of the Sun, it was released this week.
"We said to ourselves, since we are celebrating our 20 years in 2018, why don't we have this hip hop based frequency that is very reminiscent of our earlier work. That's how we shaped and moulded this album."
By his own admission, work was 'monotonous and tedious,' but with good reason.
"We wanted it to be an album that was sonically warm and pleasing to the ear," Taboo says, and work on the opus took place over three years.
"We are proud of it, and we always say this is our best project to date. Lyrically, it is the best work we have ever done.
"Emotionally, we tapped into a social consciousness with songs like Ring The Alarm, Get It, and Big Love. Then you have those throwback songs; Like Constant, Vibrations, Back to Life."
Plenty has changed on the political landscape since BEP's were last an active force, and the band has responded accordingly.
"We felt like we had to change that frequency that we were so used to, because the climate in the United States is not really a party climate right now. Now is not the time to be jumping around and toasting champagne like I Got A Feeling was. That was a very celebratory moment, we were going to clubs and partying.
"Right now we are not living that party life, and we are going through some serious issues in this horrible climate that we are living in. We have mass shootings in schools, illegal immigration reform, we have Native Americans that are not able to vote, which is horrendous, because I am Native American.
"It has become a huge set back for a lot of people who were the first people of this land, and now there's this struggle...not to mention police brutality, and all this craziness that is happening here in the United States and around the world, and we made a conscious effort to create songs that would best reflect the climate of the time."
The band tackled the rise in school shootings on the Big Love video. It's a hugely emotive subject, and one that needed to be treated delicately.
I imagine that wasn't an easy video to make...
"Trust me, it was super hard," Taboo agrees, "There were a lot of times that we were afraid to put it out.
"We had to get it right, and we knew we were going into it with empathy, respect and a true appreciation for those who have to go through this on a daily basis. It became part of a bigger reasoning than music - it became a message that needed to be talked about."
"We need a vote," he says, answering the question on whether real change and progress can be made where gun laws are concerned stateside.
"Real change comes from changing the guards - changing the house, cleaning out the cobwebs of injustice and elitism.
"We need to have the power of the people be the thing that overpowers the people in power, not in a violent way. In no way are we saying to take away the Second Amendment from the folks that want to bear firearms.
"What we're saying is let's have a situation where we control the type of firearms that people have - and we don't have semi-automatic weapons being sold to 18-year-old kids. "Why does an 18-year-old kid need a semi-automatic weapon?
"You can take kids away from their families, but you can't take guns away from kids. I don't get that."
The second part of the video is just as dramatic - and focuses on the illegal immigration reform.
"It's horrible. It's such a serious issue here in the United States. It is a very scary time, and a time to come together and really unite."
For BEPs in 2018, the message was more important than the chart placing: "It's not burning down the charts, but we don't care about that," Taboo shares, although less than a month after being debuted on YouTube, it has clocked up eight million views.
"We've done the pop chart, and we've done the Billboard Number One. That's not where we're at right now.
"That's the beauty of us going on tour - we are able to spread the word live, in a physical form, and we're able to remind people that we have the I Got A Feeling, Let's Get It Started, Pump It and the Boom Boom Pow, but let's remember that we also have the Big Love and the Where is the Love," he says.
Of course Fergie is no longer a pea in the pod, ("We're re-introducing the world to the trio that started BEP"), but there is a new family member in the fold, and a band of brilliance will be backing the peas when they take the stage at the Marshall Arena on Saturday night.
As for the show itself?
"It is energetic, thought-provoking, socially conscious," he promises, "We will lead with love. Let's party and have a good time like only Black Eyed Peas know how to do, but let's have a reality check and do it in a way where we can unite, and lead people in the direction of a frequency of positivity."
To book tickets for the Marshall Arena date click here
Interview by Sammy Jones @sammyjonespress
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