Though the Black Eyed Peas concert with Taylor Swift in Central Park was cancelled last night due to thunderstorms, the rain isn’t the only thing keeping the BEP down. While performing with Stromae on a mashup of his Euro hit “Alors On Danse” and the group’s “Don’t Stop The Party” (from their LP The Beginning) on French TV show Taratata, will.i.am took a giant professional leap backward by taking out his Blackberry and reading the lyrics to the song right off his phone. See below.

We love how he even needs to peek at his phone to remember to sing “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t”.

We’re trying to think of reasons why this would be an acceptable thing to do on live TV (er, jet lag made him forget the lyrics?), but really, there’s no excuse for this. Will.i.am wrote the song, and it’s been around for quite some time, you’ve already performed it on television, and honestly, why is he even concerned about getting the words just right when he could basically rattle off any inane non-sequiturs about partying and no one would be able to tell that those aren’t the real lyrics?

[Via The Hollywood Reporter]