The Black Eyed Peas take rap back to the dance floor

The Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow" arrives like a fusillade of punches and kicks, an onomatopeia traveling at warp speed. Scooting along at about 130 beats per minute, it's a pneumatic drill of a song, with references both literal and oblique to 1980s techno, Kanye West's "808s & Heartbreak," recent French house music and "Jock Jams."

It's by far the best song in this group's catalog, which tends toward the oppressively genial, and also the most successful, topping the Billboard Hot 100 for more than two months now.

"I'm so 3008," Fergie, the group's singer, snipes. "You're so two-thousand-and-late."

Pretending to be from the future has been in style before, but 3008 might be a stretch. How about 1982 or 1989? This sort of dance-rap has heritage, dating back to hip-hop's roots in disco and the electro-rap of Afrika Bambaataa.

"The birth of hip-hop wasn't slow," will.i.am, the rapper-producer who is the architect of the Black Eyed Peas sound, said in a telephone interview this week. "It was dance music. The only place it lived was the clubs."

And now it's migrating back there. "Boom Boom Pow" is one of three songs currently in the Top 10 of the Billboard singles chart that drag hip-hop out to the dance floor; there's also Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" (Ultra) and Kid Cudi's "Day 'n' Nite."(G.O.O.D./Universal Motown). This is the first time in years that so much hip-hop is moving so quickly.

"Boom Boom Pow" is just one of several songs on the often-vibrant, only rarely confounding "The E.N.D." (Interscope), the fifth album by the Black Eyed Peas (which also includes the rappers apl.de.ap and Taboo), that recall not just hip-hop's early days but also the fast rap of the late '80s and early '90s, the brief but thrilling run of hip-house, even the chant-centric party records of the Crooklyn Clan.

The song "Meet Me Halfway" employs a familiar house and disco trick: For a few bars at the outset Fergie sings an aching vocal, hanging in empty space. Then the four-four beat slides in, both anchoring her and nudging her aside. "Electric City," with its dub and dance-punk echoes, suggests that the debut album by Santigold wasn't far away during recording sessions.