Only, without a clear perspective or a best friend to hold his hand, he’s left with little but a cool T-shirt and a pair of new BAPE sneakers.The Chicago-born entertainer recently sat down with CNN's Eliott C. Jackson”, is a knowing nod to the kind of sentiment Pharrell looks to duplicate. The brief but recognizable sample from Outkast’s “Ms. At one point P raps about the exit and entrance of two important figures in his life: “Seventh grade it was cursed and sad/ But the gift left within it is when I first met Chad/ But even Chad could tell you that my Christmas was jinxed/ Grandma died on 12/19.” It’s a rare open-hearted moment, unaffected by “black Carl Sagan” proselytizing or BBC chain boasting. One of the album's few redeeming tracks comes early on “Best Friend”, an autobiographical ode to friendship in the face of struggle. Where the mixtape exploded with enthusiasm and wit, In My Mind the album is corroded and ineffectual. There’s no denying that Pharrell wasn’t completely built for this kind of forum, but the idea that a producer of his caliber can’t put together something resembling a likeable LP- particularly in light of his endlessly amusing Gangsta Grillz mixtape, In My Mind: The Prequel- is insane. Unfortunately, that's exactly what we get. It was also an opportunity for Skateboard P to spotlight not just his mosquito-throated singing style, but also his bric-a-brac cadence and elocution. Williams’ hard sell on the album, more than a year ago, was a split work: Eight R&B songs and eight rap songs, speaking to his production history. Or Britney’s irrefutable “I'm a Slave 4 U”. Even Pusha T of the Clipse strikes out on the limp “Stay With Me (Dim the Lights)”, a song that has me wondering what happened to the guy that laced Noreaga’s brain-bursting “Superthug”. The less said about “Number 1”- perhaps Kanye West and Pharrell’s lowest four minutes ever- the better. It’s the first song in a truly ghastly second half of an album that didn't need to exist in the first place.Īnd it's all downhill from there.
However, that brings us to “Young Girl”, a mediocre paean to (maybe) underage ladies that sounds like a cross between very bad Prince-aping and “Sunshine”-era Jigga. It's the same kind of breezy thrill afforded by “Frontin’”, Williams’ hit with Jay-Z from the 2003 compilation The Neptunes Present.Clones.
Pharrell in my mind font series#
Granted, there are impressive moments: The arresting “Keep It Playa”, featuring Slim Thug, features some rattling snares and a familiar series of guitar plucks that rumbles into a hilarious falsetto bridge about J.
But stretched over the course of 16 songs, with few contributions from those who owe him for part of their success, leaves a moist, spoiled aftertaste. Not that there’s anything wrong with his brand of quasi-philosophical, brazenly materialistic music- see Jay-Z’s "I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)”, for example. Without that dark core, Pharrell is left to focus expressly on the bouncy and bounce-able. One listen to Kenna’s overlooked 2003 post-new wave album New Sacred Cow- produced entirely by Hugo- reveals the evil synths and cold kinetics he brings to Williams’ airy theatricality and bougie Turks & Caicos yacht-rap. So one’s got to wonder, with that pedigree, why the hell Pharrell would leave his longtime partner out of the production process for his debut solo album, I n My Mind? The dark curls and eccentric lazers in the Neptunes’ music have always been attributed, at least in part, to Hugo. In the canon of great American duos, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo- better known as hip-hop’s paragons of icy minimalism, the Neptunes- rank somewhere between Laurel & Hardy and Hall & Oates.
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