If you don't know who the Black Eyed Peas are, you're either a time traveler or have recently woken up from a coma (and in either case, congratulations!). The rest of you already know how insanely successful they are, despite having some of the worst music imaginable. What you probably don't know is that very little of that music is actually theirs.

For instance, a young rapper named Phoenix Phenom recently accused the Peas of ripping off her song "Boom Dynamite" and calling it "Boom Boom Pow." On the one hand, the only similarities are with the beat and the "boom boom" part. On the other hand, the beat and the "boom boom" part is as much of the Black Eyed Peas that we can listen to before our souls begin to atrophy.

In hip-hop, there are two schools of thought when it comes to sampling. Some people follow the P. Diddy method, which does involve spending a fuck-ton of money, but the upside is you get to take a huge, steaming, shiny-suited shit all over pretty much any beloved song of your choosing. But it's not for everybody. The Vanilla Ice method of blatantly stealing a song and hoping nobody notices may work better for the cash strapped.

Apparently, the Black Eyed Peas are an impoverished bunch. Shortly after they released the song "Party All the Time," a band called Freeland suddenly realized that their song "Mancry" had been sampled--unfortunately, the Peas had neglected to inform them of this fact.

We tried to chalk all this up to an overworked will.i.am, who "makes" most of the beats for the group. Writing original songs is hard enough, imagine having to do it while also balancing the daunting task of finding something for those two weirdoes who aren't Fergie to do. But no, even solo they can't be trusted. For instance, back in 2007 will.i.am grabbed a hefty chunk of Daft Punk's "Around the World" (without asking) to use in his first single. For some reason, Daft Punk wasn't too happy about the whole deal.

But by far the worst example of song plagiarism is Fergie's hit single "Fergalicious," which is pretty much just J. J. Fad's "Supersonic" with slightly altered lyrics and a remarkably amped up realization that you're listening to all that is wrong with music when you hear it.