Stranger Than Fiction: 10 Things We Learned From Taboo's Autobiography

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The musical alias “Taboo” has roots in an incest-filled porno.

Early into Fallin’ Up, the glorified BEP hype-man recounts the origins of his moniker, telling a story about how he’d kill time inside Rosemead High School (in Rosemead, California) by defacing textbooks. Inexplicably, he wrote the word, “Tab,” which led to “Taboo”—or, in his own written words: “Like the 1970s porn movie, I thought. Illicit. Sexy. Out of bounds.” Turns out, Taboo was actually released in 1980, the first of a 23-part series that delves into father-daughter and mother-son sexy times. At least he didn’t choose Deep Throat as his spitter-name.

Taboo’s pretty much incapable of stringing together metaphors and similes without the help of popular children’s entertainment.

To be fair, no one expects Taboo to construct prose on the level of Jonathan Franzen. Far too frequently, though, the writing in Fallin’ Up reads like the musings of a kindergartener. Looking back on his relationship with his grandmother, he writes, “I was the boy Max in Where the Wild Things Are, and Nanny was the friendliest ‘wild thing.’” As a teenager, he was “Rosemead High School’s equivalent to Mumbles out of Happy Feet.” Reflecting upon the emotions surrounding BEP’s signing to Interscope Records in 1997: “That check in my hand was the beans held in Jack’s palm in the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk.” And so on. We’ll save the multiple Charlie and the Cholocate Factory references for your own reading pleasure.

Your boy Bud Bundy played a formative role in Taboo's early career.

As a determined high school kid with rap-specific dreams, Taboo made his way around Los Angeles' various nightclubs and lo-fi performance venues. The one he details with the most verve is Whiskey A Go-Go, which held a popular event called Ballistyx every Thursday night; there, he showed off his dancing abilities and gained the confidence needed to perform in front of crowds. The mastermind behind Ballistyx was none other than young Married With Children actor, and outspoken hip-hop junkie, David Faustino. So, basically, don't be surprised if a future Black Eyed Peas album features a guest spot from Grandmaster B.

Taboo's nursery-like rhymes of today aren’t much denser than his first-ever raps.

Recounting the first bars he ever spit in public, Taboo shows that the pedestrian lyrics he kicks on BEP’s many hit singles aren’t exactly the products of long-term improvement. Here’s a sample of his earliest rhymes, courtesy of Fallin’ Up: “Well it’s Taboo, chilling with my crew/So make way, coz I am coming through/And what I come to do is rock a hype show/And when I grab the mic, the crowd yells ‘Ho.’” And now, Tab’s contribution to the group’s monstrous hit “Boom Boom Pow”: “I'm on the supersonic boom/ Y'all hear the space shit zoom/ When when I step inside the room/ Them girls go ape-shit.” Does profanity factor into artistic maturity?

Will.i.am's marijuana game is on some next level shhh.

Chapter six, provocatively entitled “Misfits & Mishaps,” opens with high praise for the Black Eyed Peas frontman. Tab explains that the first time he and Will truly kicked it, the future hit-making producer rolled “probably the most expertly, perfectly rolled [blunt] I’d seen—and he rolled that shit as quick as he rapped.” Just one of the many skills that must’ve impressed Eazy-E back in Will’s Ruthless Records days, we’d imagine.

The family-friendly Peas are just as sex-crazed as every other rap group.

Before they catapulted into the Super-Bowl-halftime-show stratosphere, the Peas opened for ska-rock group No Doubt. While telling readers how much fun he and his groupmates had on that tour, Taboo drops some info that raises his, Will.i.am, and apl.de.ap's cool-point tallies in our book. To ensure joy-filled afterparties, the Peas sent out entourage members to recruit female concertgoers, resulting in "the sight of an advancing, glamorous army of fifty different 'options.'" With such forethought, we can understand why the Peas always have a feeling that tonight's gonna be a good night.

Prince—yes, the pop music king—hates curse words.

Unsurprisingly, Fallin’ Up has several memories of celebrity mingling, including run-ins with Eminem, Justin Timberlake, and, yes, even John Stamos (because, really, you’re not megastar until you’ve partied with the Stamos). A standout tale involves the almighty Prince, set during a party at the icon’s house. Hoping to impress Prince with rap skills, Taboo grabbed a microphone and tried to rock the A-list crowd, starting a call-and-response chant of “Rock that shit!” Prince, not having any of that mess, had the mic removed from Tab’s clutches, and later admonished the stunned Pea with, “The slave master has you trained to always use foul language.” Who knew Prince talks like Malcolm X? This passage does include one of Tab’s better writing samples; describing the legend’s demeanor while chastising our narrator, Taboo writes, “Not once did that pencil moustache move.” We can see it like a 27-inch Zenith.

One-hit wonder Natalie Imbruglia once shot Taboo down.

While on a European tour in the late ’90s, Taboo got completely smashed off mixed drinks and kamikaze shots inside a nightclub. Also partying at said venue was Imbruglia, known at the time for her sole hit, “Torn.” High on the Australian songbird’s beauty, as well as an excessive amount of booze, Tab hit her with the line, “Do you know how beautiful you are—look at your eyes!” Unimpressed by his drunken come-on, Imbruglia barely flinched. So, as Tab puts it, “I got up, said good-bye, and then fell over the arm of the couch.” Sandpaper-smooth, man.

Taboo will get medieval on a chain-snatcher.

The setting is a club in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the Peas congregated for some post-show debauchery. Their dabbling in the fairer sex, however, made the spoken-for ladies’ boyfriends pissy, while other guys simply wanted to enjoy the same VIP area perks as the women. After unsuccessfully pleading with Taboo for entrance, one dude grabbed Taboo’s chain; one of Tab’s boys punched the guy in the mouth, which led to an all-out brawl. Once the ruckus was ended, the Peas went back to their hotel, but Tab, still tight about his chain, ripped a shower-curtain-pole out and flailed it around like a psycho in the middle of the street. Let us find out that the Black Eyed Peas are harder than most thug rappers.

Taboo's love of booze once led to a man probing his you-know-what.

Taboo’s stories of touring are full of penitent recollections of drugs and alcohol, the latter indulgence sending to the hospital after an inebriated Taboo fell off stage during a New Year’s Eve 2005 performance in Las Vegas. The spill’s outcome was a broken tailbone. The healing process included trips to an acupuncturist keen on breaking the tailbone back. His method? Treating Tab like a “glove puppet,” which meant “probing around my anus, trying to grab the tailbone,” causing the patient to scream, “GET YOUR FUCKING FINGERS OUT OF MY ASS!” And that, folks, is something we never would’ve known about if not for Fallin’ Up. Isn’t literature grand?