Taboo Brings Music and Heart to Dora While Celebrating 30 Years of Black Eyed Peas
Get ready, Explorers! Dora is back with season 3 dropping on Paramount+ this July, just in time for the big Great Dora Fiesta celebration. Everyone’s favorite bilingual explorer Dora continues her epic adventures through the mystical and magical rainforest. Pop Culture Planet’s Nadia Castro spoke with Black Eyed Peas’ Taboo about reprising his role as Quickatoo, contributing an original song, and working with his daughter on the new season.
The 25th anniversary tribute album The Great Dora Fiesta, releasing June 13, will include Taboo’s original track “Melodía” and 14 more songs inspired by Dora the Explorer. He revealed that this was a song he had written almost 10 years prior, but it was sitting on a hard drive until he decided to revamp it and submit it to the Dora team. “I remember going in reprogramming the drums to be a little bit more Afro beat and Caribbean style beat. Then formulating the lyrics was based more on, like, I gotta make sure that everything I say has a Spanglish twist to it, and then tapping into the idea, the melody, ritmo and the love that we have for creativity.”
He had already had a connection with the Dora team from doing previous episodes as Quickatoo, but this inspired a whole new storyline for the series. They pitched using the song “Melodia” for a father-daughter episode where Dora is looking for a special song to celebrate her Papi. The episode would find Taboo reprising his role as Quickatoo, but this time with his real-life daughter Jett Gomez joining him as Quickatoo’s daughter Quickatina. “It all came about naturally. Organic,” Taboo shared. “Then, when they said we want to put this on the 25th anniversary album, I was like, ‘What?’ They don't need original songs because they already have in-house producers and creatives and music supervisors, but they took a chance on me. I'm thankful to my Nickelodeon family. I'm thankful to Paramount, I'm thankful to Dora, the family of Dora, for even thinking of me to come along this journey with something original and something that I wrote.”
He reflected on what it was like to act alongside his daughter, expressing pride in seeing her take on a role in a show like Dora that has inspired generations of Latino children. “It was funny seeing my daughter working,” Taboo laughed. “There's a director telling Jett what to do, not dad. So I had to step outside of being a dad because I was working too. I just had to be Quickatoo.”
Taboo said he loved “seeing Jett be fearless” taking on something completely out of her comfort zone. “She did it, she completed the task, and, at the end, she's like, ‘Dad I actually had fun. It was cool.’ It's challenging, but it was fun because she had never done it before,” he shared. “It was a great experience to share, not only as a father and daughter, but also as coworkers working on this beautiful project Dora.”
When asked about his preparation for the role of Quickatoo, he spoke passionately about the energy he brings to the character. “We already do character voices when we're reading books. My love for comics and toys and just pop culture in general has always lent itself to animation and storytelling where you have these curious and very charismatic character voice actors. So I studied a lot,” he explained. “When it came to Quickatoo, it was like finding a witty, sometimes surprising type of tone. […] You switch into this, even my hand… I don't know why my hand's here,” said Taboo as he moved his hand up to his chest, explaining how his body moves according to the character. “So I tapped into that frequency to be able to bring Quickatoo to life. It's kind of like being in the recording studio, because sometimes you add character or tonality expression to your delivery when you're in the booth, so that you have different tones and different frequencies of cadences and waves in your voice.”
As the Black Eyed Peas celebrate 30 years, it’s clear their legacy is built on creating music that still resonates today. These are songs fans continue to play, dance to, and connect with even decades later. Taboo shared his thoughts on how the group has built such a lasting legacy over the years. “Our brotherhood. Myself, Will, and APL.DE.AP. We've been best friends since we were 17. We started the group at 19. Although we've had amazing, different vocalists that have come on the journey with us and will continue being family, we're still together: myself, Will, and APL.DE.AP.”
He continued: “We have this beautiful singer named J. Rey Soul and we're actually going on tour on [June 17]. We just keep on continuing to push each other, challenging each other, staying creative. That's why I think it was only right for me to channel this energy that I built with Black Eyed Peas into Dora and make an original song to contribute this energy that I've been on since I was 17 and now it's directed to Dora.”
We’re excited to see what adventures are in store in Dora season 3 hiting Paramount+ on July 2.
