Waging on with a worldwide promo tour, Black Eyed Peas frontwoman Fergie was seen arriving at Los Angeles International Airport yesterday (June 14) after shilling The E.N.D. in the Big Apple.

Though she’s seemingly been part of the group from its beginning, the Boom Boom songstress is reminiscing about the first days she injected a little estrogen into the once all-boy band.

“When I first joined, there were a lot of people who didn’t know what to make of me, and they’d been a fan of Black Eyed Peas being an underground hip-hop band,” she tells the Women in Music issue of Elle. “Then I come in, and the first song we released when I was in the band was Where Is the Love? with Justin Timberlake. So when that hit all the crossover markets, a lot of people said it was my fault that they were taken out of the underground.”

And while she’s the only member of the group who has lady bits, Fergie thanks her comrades for helping her discover her femininity. “When I first joined the Peas, I didn’t ever want to wear a skirt. I was in a kind of hard-edge point in my life, rough around the edges, collecting unemployment and living at my mom’s,” she says. “I wasn’t in a girly mood at all. But finally, when Hey Mama came around, the guys persuaded me to wear a skirt.”

She adds that “once I did, it was kind of fun and flirty, and I started exploring that part of my personality again.”