[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdv5FbuK4rY&w=420&h=315]
Even if Pharrell Williams isn’t a household name where you live, the music he’s had a hand in creating most likely is. He’s featured in this this year’s song of summer, “Blurred Lines,” Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” and he’s co-collaborated on songs such as Snoop Dogg’s “Drop it like it’s Hot” and Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.”
Sixteen Grammy nominations (and three wins) later, the music producer-song writer-recording artist sat down with TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie to talk about the path to getting to top of the Top 40.
“I can write pretty much anywhere, but in the shower it’s, like, where it’s, like, really great,” Williams told Guthrie of where he’s come up with some of his best work, including “Hot in Herre” Nelly’s super-successful 1992 hit.
But before he was sharing top billing with the likes of Nelly, Justin Timberlake and Ludacris, he was any other kid growing up in Virginia Beach, playing the drums and going to band camp. “Most of us were kinda nerdy,” Williams said. “Nobody sort of walked in, like, you know, Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl-cool.” It was at that camp where Williams, then 12, met his producing partner Chad Hugo. By the time they were 19, the duo had helped write and produce the 1992 Wreckx-N-Effect hit song, “Rump Shaker.”
Fast forward two decades and many successes, Williams says he can point to the singular best song he’s ever co-written. “My son,” he told Guthrie of Rocket, his little boy with new fiance Helen Lasichanh. “Every night’s like a sleepover,” he said of Lasichanh, who he calls his “bestie.”
So what else does the super-successful Williams hope to accomplish? “Honestly? It’s … more music,” he said. That said, music isn’t the only thing on the artist’s plate: Beginning Nov. 5, Williams will appear as a mentor on Rihanna’s new fashion reality competition show “Styled to Rock” on the Style Network.
article by Courtney Hazlett via today.com
Posts tagged as “Pharrell Williams”
NEW YORK (AP) — For years, anti-gay epithets and sentiments in rap have largely been accepted, along with its frequent misogyny and violence, as part of the hip-hop culture — a culture that has been slow to change, even as gays enjoy more mainstream acceptance. But a shift appears to be on the horizon.
“People are learning how to live and get along more, and accept people for who they are and not bash them or hurt them because they’re different,” Snoop Dogg said in a recent interview.
“WHAT about an audiobook?” Pharrell Williams asked, sitting at the head of a conference table at the Park Avenue South offices of Rizzoli as he looked at the nearly finished galleys for an October release called “Pharrell: Places and Spaces I’ve Been.” Here was a lavish coffee-table book filled with images of the many products he has designed in collaboration with other artists and fashion designers, and interviews between Mr. Williams and the likes of Jay-Z, Anna Wintour and Zaha Hadid, which do not exactly lend themselves to the narrative treatment. But why not?
“It could be really interesting,” Mr. Williams said, “if I went out and hired Morgan Freeman or Danny Glover to read them.”Or, as was pointed out by others in the room, it could be a little weird, if not uncool.
“An audiobook is not a good look,” said Loïc Villepontoux, sitting across the table. A calm, affable man, he is Mr. Williams’s longtime business associate, who oversees the licensing operations for his fashion labels.
“It’s like a lot of old women listening to the latest Richard Ford,” said Ian Luna, an editor of the book, looking a little nervous as he leafed through the galleys.
Helen Lasichanh, Mr. Williams’s fiancée, whose hair is dyed in chunks of pink, blond and brown like a block of Neapolitan ice cream, asked him smartly, “Have you ever bought an audiobook?” “Let me ask you a question,” Mr. Williams said. “Has anyone of my persuasion ever done one? No. It could create a wave.”
They heard him out.
As he approaches 40, Mr. Williams, artist and superproducer, is having the opposite of a midlife career crisis. In addition to an ever-expanding roster of singers and songwriters with whom he collaborates (recent examples include Justin Bieber, Frank Ocean and Conor Maynard), his services are increasingly sought by corporations to remix their product designs. Since announcing in May that he is restructuring all of his creative endeavors under a single umbrella company, called I Am Other, Mr. Williams might as well have put out a “for hire” sign.
“WHAT about an audiobook?” Pharrell Williams asked, sitting at the head of a conference table at the Park Avenue South offices of Rizzoli as he looked at the nearly finished galleys for an October release called “Pharrell: Places and Spaces I’ve Been.” Here was a lavish coffee-table book filled with images of the many products he has designed in collaboration with other artists and fashion designers, and interviews between Mr. Williams and the likes of Jay-Z, Anna Wintour and Zaha Hadid, which do not exactly lend themselves to the narrative treatment. But why not?
“It could be really interesting,” Mr. Williams said, “if I went out and hired Morgan Freeman or Danny Glover to read them.”
Or, as was pointed out by others in the room, it could be a little weird, if not uncool.
“An audiobook is not a good look,” said Loïc Villepontoux, sitting across the table. A calm, affable man, he is Mr. Williams’s longtime business associate, who oversees the licensing operations for his fashion labels.
“It’s like a lot of old women listening to the latest Richard Ford,” said Ian Luna, an editor of the book, looking a little nervous as he leafed through the galleys.
Helen Lasichanh, Mr. Williams’s fiancée, whose hair is dyed in chunks of pink, blond and brown like a block of Neapolitan ice cream, asked him smartly, “Have you ever bought an audiobook?” “Let me ask you a question,” Mr. Williams said. “Has anyone of my persuasion ever done one? No. It could create a wave.”
They heard him out.
As he approaches 40, Mr. Williams, artist and superproducer, is having the opposite of a midlife career crisis. In addition to an ever-expanding roster of singers and songwriters with whom he collaborates (recent examples include Justin Bieber, Frank Ocean and Conor Maynard), his services are increasingly sought by corporations to remix their product designs. Since announcing in May that he is restructuring all of his creative endeavors under a single umbrella company, called I Am Other, Mr. Williams might as well have put out a “for hire” sign.