“The message is to be of service,” will.i.am tells Ebro during the sixth episode of Apple Music’s The Message. “Whether it's a simple thing [like] providing an escape via a song, a little bit of joy, giving people a sense of belonging, the oddballs feeling not so odd—but then the deeper message is contributing and paying it forward, because I was a recipient of someone's good doing.” will.i.am the superstar musician may be as financially comfortable as they come, but he hasn’t forgotten what it was like growing up in East LA’s Estrada Courts housing projects. The acclaimed producer and Black Eyed Peas frontman's i.am Angel Foundation funds STEM programs and robotics clubs for some 1,200 students in grades K-12. “I remember sitting in those lines and getting a hot meal in the summer,” will.i.am says. “Taking an hour-and-a-half bus ride from my ghetto to Brentwood at the early age of seven. So now my duty, after I've had success, is to go back to the ghetto that I come from, to make sure that kids don't have to take the bus to get a robotics program. They don't have to take a bus to get a computer science program, or a college prep program. I keep that all in the neighbourhood.” Most recently, he released his “American Dream” single, a song created with the express purpose of raising money to facilitate more experiences like this for even more children. “If you're equipped with skill sets, you're going to change your mentality [to] 'I can't wait to raise the value of my hood, to educate every single person in my hood, to bring opportunities to my hood, to where the income of my hood, the property value of the hood and the things that people own in the hood goes up.” For his The Message playlist, will.i.am included selections from MCs whose catalogues are steeped with similar themes of self-empowerment, acts like Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy and Eric B. & Rakim, along with a handful of timeless grooves from icons of Black music like Earth, Wind & Fire, James Brown and Fela Kuti.