The yearbook photo of a young William Adams, Palisades High School class of 1993 was projected onto the screen, clad in a suit, brown eyes staring straight into the camera. Better known now as will.i.am, the frontman of the Black Eyed Peas, Adams reminisced on his high school days in the Pacific Palisades, fondly remembering the community.
The musician turned tech founder spoke in a conversation with current Palisades Charter High School students, returning to his alma mater to motivate and bring joy to the school’s seniors, who have been rocked by the loss of their school community after the Palisades fire.
Students streamed into an auditorium at the Skirball Cultural Center on Wednesday evening to listen to will.i.am. discuss his time as a high school student in the Palisades, his work with AI and his advice for the group as they graduate and think about career paths.
He has returned to the school many times since his graduation in 1993, holding the school among the places in the world that can make him feel “centered.” Like many of the students in the audience, he has been saddened by the loss of the community and the damage to the school caused by the fire.
“My school, my memories, everyone’s memories that were there… It kind of hurt. I don’t know why it hurt so much, but it hurt, because I would go into Palisades every time I felt low,” he said.
During his time as a student, he would take the bus each day from his home in Boyle Heights to learn in the Palisades, where he was inspired by teachers that encouraged him to ask questions.
“Every last week of school, I was the one that was crying,” he remembered.
Students from the high school’s Black Student Union and Latino Student Union moderated the event, held a week before the high school’s June 4 graduation at the Hollywood Bowl. They asked will.i.am about his time at the high school, work in the music industry and his AI model, which he says is built for creatives.
They were intrigued as he showcased the capabilities of FYI.AI, giggling as the technology crafted a verbal response to will.i.am’s questions, coming up with its own answers to the lighthearted hypothetical question the students threw out– what would you bring with you to a desert island?
Students from the school’s robotics team in the audience chatted with the musician about their team as he mentioned his own investments in school robotic teams, becoming proud that his alma mater has a team of their own.
“The whole world is STEM,” will.i.am said.
He offered advice to students, encouraging them to be focused on the future and to innovate.
Reeling from the fire’s impact on their school community, many students at Palisades Charter High have found moments of joy in events like these and upcoming graduation festivities, though their senior year has become different than they imagined. With the school’s facilities partially burned and damaged by the fire, the more than 3,000 students have moved to a new campus, the old Sears building in Santa Monica.
“I can’t say I like the Sears building as much as I would like to be at Pali now, but I’m glad they’re still doing events,” senior Xavier Crawford, 17, said.
Connecting with peers in other ways has become all the more important to the students since they can no longer be in the Palisades.
“Our school community was destroyed,” he said of the Pacific Palisades.
Senior Parson Boone, 18, felt a sense of community and camaraderie through the event, after the loss of the physical community of the Palisades. If there’s any upside to the fire, it’s the deepening of community that has taken place since the students went through the communal loss of the community surrounding their school, going through the loss of homes or seeing friends go through losing their homes and being unable to finish out their year on campus.
“Even though the events are different, we have an entire community. Even though we have that setback of not having our familiarity, we have more community to make up for it,” Boone said. “When we are having these events, I’m noticing that social circles are expanding, everyone is more friendly with each other– everyone can relate to that trauma of losing their school or their home and I feel like it really brings us together.”
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