How will.i.am put the boom back into LG's Xboom speakers

will.i.am is a regular feature in the tech world. Just last year the nine-time Grammy Award-winning artist and tech entrepreneur partnered with Mercedes to produce Sound Drive, a feature that turns your driving into a live music jam. In 2025, he was back at CES with LG in a partnership that saw him tuning and putting his name to its latest Xboom speakers and earphones.

The new Xboom by will.i.am range includes three sizes of speakers – the boom Bounce, Grab and Stage 301 – plus new Xboom Buds earphones. The largest of the speakers is the Stage 301, which looks much like an on-stage monitor speaker, with a wedge design that can sit at different angles and a replaceable battery to give it up to 11 hours of playback.

Both the Bounce and the Grab are smaller units, the Bounce referencing the ‘up-bouncing passive radiators’ that light up and visibly move to the music. The Grab meanwhile is the smaller of the two and is designed to be easily held – or grabbed – with one hand.

The Buds are more subtle than the speakers – forgoing the flashy lights for a plain black design. These earphones feature not only feature LG’s Active Noise Cancelling tech but also Bluetooth’s LE Audio Auracast to listen to broadcast audio streams.

At an exclusive LG press event in Las Vegas for CES, will.i.am said, “This has been the most fruitful, in-depth collaboration that I've had in a very, very long time. It's been so rewarding creatively to the depths of my imagination and vision.

Initially, he thought LG just wanted to use his track, Boom Boom Pow to launch their new Xboom speakers, but there turned out to be far more on the table. “I had no clue that they were going to say, hey, not only do we want to use your song, we want to collaborate with you on the Xboom by will.i.am.”

Asking how deep of a collaboration LG wanted, will.i.am asked if he could fine-tune how the speakers sound, making the necessary adjustments to treble, bass and mid-range, to which LG was more than happy to oblique. “So I put my audio team together. I selected my team to work with their team and engineers that I've been working with on songs like I Got a Feeling, Where's the Love, every song Black Eyed Pea has ever made, are the ones that went into the speaker alongside the engineers at LG.”

The collaboration went even further than just the tuning of the speakers though. will.i.am and his team even created the sounds the speakers made when you turned them on or selected certain settings and did so from scratch.

They wanted to use real instruments to craft the sounds, even for those that would only last a second, but it wasn’t a quick process. “I gotta feeling took 30 minutes to write, Where is the Love took a couple of hours to write. Doing that took three days, for a second-long sound.”

Selecting the right instrument and mics for the job, will.i.am got to work. Picking a marimba and soft mallets, to deliver that right note for that ‘on’ sound, and a Shure SM57 to capture it just the right way. “When you buy these consumer electronics, somebody's making all that stuff. I put in the same amount of effort I put into my music to make the sound package for the stuff. “

So why did this project catch his attention, and convince him to dedicate so much time to it?

“I love technology, I’m the first person when something comes out, I go out and buy stuff. And I’m an LG consumer. If you go to my house, you go to my studio, you’ll see LG TVs. The equipment I work on is three LG panels. So to be partnering with LG and have my own line of xboom by will.i.am… I know LG used to stand for Lucky Gold Star and now it’s Life’s Good, but for me, it’s Let’s Go!”

Xboom by will.i.am speakers will be available later this year, with prices to be confirmed.