Music

Four years ago, the music critic Kodwo Eshun wrote a brilliant and insightful essay about Pharrell Williams. Eshun observed that Pharrell – both as whiz-kid producer in the Neptunes and as the falsetto-voiced frontman of their funk-rock alter-ego N*E*R*D – was the ultimate in ‘black geek chic’. He represented the flipside of gangsta braggadocio – the nerdy African-American adolescent who professed his love of comics, sci-fi, computer games and ‘white’ music (prog, metal, indie, country-rock, etc). Like the nerds at school who earned immunity from the bullies by making them laugh, Pharrell and his Neptunes partner Chad Hugo were the studio geeks that gangsta rappers (Clipse, Mystikal, Busta Rhymes, Noreaga, Ol’ Dirty Bastard) turned to when they needed a touch of sonic violence. They were the interlocutors between clever thugs and sardonic geeks.

But it’s all gone tits up for them lately. That ‘Neptunes Greatest Hits’ folder you set up on your iTunes was filling up nicely until about 2004 (Britney, Justin, Kelis, Snoop, Nelly, Usher, Missy) but has long gone fallow – the only recent additions have been by-numbers, big-bucks jobs for credibility chasers like Gwen Stefani, Nelly Furtado and Mariah Carey. Now ‘In My Mind’, his solo debut, could well be Pharrell’s creative nadir.

This is the unpleasant sound of Pharrell crossing the playground: instead of trying to impress the bullies, he’s now become one. He’s traded in sonic thuggery for lyrical thuggery – all bitch-taunting, gun-toting raps and willy-waving loverman R&B ballads (surely ‘Take It Off, Dim The Lights’ is an ironic tribute to The Onion’s Smoove B?). Sure, there are vestigial touches of Pharrell the geek left in the mix – some ethereal harmonies, a few skittery drum loops, the odd delicious chord change, a couple of decent singles – and, in fairness, were this a new album by, say, Usher or R Kelly, we’d be hailing it as a career high. Instead it’s a criminal waste of talent from someone who sounds faintly bored.