In 1999, R&B Diva Mariah Carey spoke out against media bias regarding her as a songwriter. Today, she leads the 2022 class of Billboard’s Songwriters Hall of Fame. Mariah Carey appeared on the “Charlie Rose” show on PBS in 1999. While being interviewed, she voiced her displeasure with the media not regarding her as a […]
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Chad Hugo’s discography is certainly one of legends. The Neptunes erupted on the scene in the ’90s, producing songs for some of the biggest and most important rising stars in the game. In the new millennium, their starpower gained national attention with the success of songs like Jay-Z’s “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It To Me)” and Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass.” And over the next 20 years, the Neptunes were the masterminds behind major pop and hip-hop classics, ranging from Britney Spears’ “I’m a Slave 4 U” to Snoop Doog’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” as well as music with their band N.E.R.D. He along with Williams captured the zeitgeist of the early 2000s and today, and now those same records are inspiring a new generation of young creators.
“There are artists that have sampled Neptunes beats, and it’s an honor that sampling’s taking place of our music from previous years,” Hugo says. “We were always trying to get people together in a positive way, and it’s always great to see the people of all walks of life, races, creeds, color, nationalities, ethnicities, and classes knowing a tune that we’re involved with. They may not all know where it came from, but they can say, yeah, I heard that before.”
Once The Neptunes hit a peak, Hugo seemingly took a step back from music, but he assures me that he’s never stopped creating or studying music. Chad reveals he’s spent the last three years studying jazz music, and he’s been analyzing the work of the greats like John Coltrane and jazz pianist Barry Harris as well as discovering new artists on YouTube.
“I don’t think I‘ll ever retire from music, or stop making music and learning about music.”
He’s also spent quality time with his family. He offered his favorite dad joke during our conversation. “How do the Ewoks communicate on Endor?” he asks. After a brief pause and chuckle, he happily adds: “E-walkie talkies.”
After a hiatus, The Neptunes reunited in early 2020, producing several hits for artists like Megan Thee Stallion, SZA, and Buju Banton. The more recent production credits held on to the same high-energy, party aesthetic that defined their early work, but they also explored ethereal sounds on songs like SZA’s “Hit Different” or Summer Walker’s “Dat Right There.” Whether The Neptunes will continue to produce similar songs in the future, Chad is not so forthcoming. “It’s been great, the Neptunes are great,” he insists, before hinting that he’ll be focusing on solo material and side projects: “I’m concentrating on different works and some new productions and new sounds.
The “retirement” word has been thrown around here and there lately, and Hugo recently told GQ, “I feel like this is the last round of… of making music.” But when I ask him to elaborate on that thought, he sings a slightly different tune. “I don’t think I’ll ever retire from music, or stop making music and learning about music,” he says.
With his decorated resume, you might assume Chad would have an air of celebrity arrogance to him, but he’s cool and humble, graciously rejecting compliments about his work. Over the course of one hour, I play a handful of his classic hits with the hopes of jogging memories from years past. At times, I catch him marveling at his own work and recounting stories from those studio sessions. “Yeah, that’s a banger,” he says when I play Jay-Z’s 2000 single “I Just Wanna Love You (Give It 2 Me)”. We start with this year, and go backwards.
Pusha-T, ‘It’s Almost Dry’ (2022)
Chad Hugo: There were a lot of inspirations from Miami Vice and Joker. It wasn’t the blueprint, but just as far as vibe-wise. We recorded in the U.S. at the Boathouse Studio in Miami. Pusha wanted to shout out what was happening in Virginia locally, and I think that’s really cool. It’s good to be a part of the product and making the sound.
We aimed to [make] his rhyme scheme be cohesive with the beat and the rhythms. You can hear the way he’s rhyming with the drum. That was really important to Pusha, Pharrell, and myself, because a lot of the rhymes back in the day, we’d write on a piece of paper. But this was more in the pocket, as far as the unison of the rhythm. It was really important to get people moving in that regard. We were just really trying to stab with it and get real with it. I think it’s a communal experience when you vibe with the rhythms, and it’s a dance you do both mentally and verbally.
The weather was really nice. I remember Pharrell took us out on his friend’s yacht and we were playing tunes. I didn’t understand some of the stuff, like the one with Pharrell on the FedEx truck until later. I’ll be honest, I was getting really nauseous, like something’s really uneasy with this. It felt like I’m in one of those delirium movies where things are just blurry. But as Push was laying down his verse at this studio home, I saw the vision of what we were trying to convey.
You know, this is entertainment and you have to approach things like when you read a book or a novel or a murder mystery or watch a film that’s just supposed to make you feel a certain way or have a good commentary afterwards. Some people back in the day would say, “That’s not music. People get shot to the music,” and they just don’t know how to separate themselves from the message that was an after effect. What we need to do is inspire people to understand this is entertainment and it’s fiction.
Push mentioned that this album was like a Verzuz battle between The Neptunes and Kanye West. Did you feel that competitive spirit while working on it?
Not me. I love Kanye’s work, too. Back in this studio in Virginia, Virginia’s Recording Arts, he played a tune and I was really into it, with much respect. Over the years it’s always been about competition with people, but my approach has been: let’s be a community so that we can rock back to back and do our thing. It’s always good to find that common ground between the music. Over the years, people have said, “I’m just watching you on the drums and being individualistic.” I’m like, “No, let’s find a common ground. Let’s find a good rhythm so the DJ could rock and we could party.” To each his own.
Omar Apollo, “Tamagotchi” (2022)
We recorded in Miami, and Omar is a great singer and a talented guy. He’s really good at melodies, and he’s always coming up with those. Yeah, no hablo Espanol, pero yo entiendo poco. I try, and I’m continuing to learn. Those kinds of chords have a sad connotation. It reminds me of a tune that I once learned. I cannot access it through my cerebral cortex, but it’s about something, like, I’m just out of luck and shit is sad right now, but let’s still do this and smile and keep it moving.
SZA, “Hit Different” (2020)
SZA is a genius and she has this spiritual vibe. I remember her being in the studio and setting crystals and I was like, “Holy smoke, are we going to get our palms read, too? With the tarot cards and our fortunes told?” She had a positive vibe, and she’s singing some notes that are… I don’t want to put her in a jazz realm because some people will be like, “Oh, she’s not jazzy,” but yeah.
Peeling down those chords, I was like, “Yeah, let’s go with that.” Sometimes I’m just there in the back like, “Yeah.” Or sometimes I’ll play, and they’ll be like, “Try something different.” Then sometimes I will just tune something behind the scenes. I won’t say anything. I’ll just put a little seasoning or whatever. But there’s a jazz song [Eddie Jefferson’s “There I Go, There I Go Again”] that’s like, “There I go, there I go, there I go.” It just wanders off, which is beautiful.
Jay-Z f/ Pharrell, “Blue Magic” (2007)
I think that was a Rakim flow he was paying homage to. I don’t know. I’m just probably picking up on it right now. The Frankenstein sample where he said, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” and the thunder. I remember being in for the mix and doing whatever. He released it right after I recorded it. It’s a great track and Jay-Z killed it… I need to go recap on American Gangster.
You haven’t seen American Gangster with Denzel Washington?
I have not. But I will. I’m going to try to do that tonight.
That’s funny, because the album was inspired by the movie. So what was your understanding of the themes while producing it?
I remember that Blue Magic was a form of the drugs or the narcotics or something, but that’s about it.
Jay-Z f/ Pharrell, “I Know” (2007)
That must have been Pharrell’s bucket era. There were some samples where he was playing buckets to contribute to the street musicians, and recording some sounds in the studio. It reminds me of that era where we sampled. It’s a good track. I like when he did those chords, the high arpeggio stuff.
Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl” (2005)
I used to build up sound libraries and stuff. They didn’t know how to do the 808 sounds, so it was like, woo. I just wanted something that would make the crowd hype and take people out of their element. She’s from the West Coast, and we recorded it here on the East Coast. I think it was at his factory. Pharrell and I were on fire with the hip-hop records and the bounce, and the boom bap aspect of things. “Ain’t no holler back girl,” I wasn’t sure where that came from, but it was like, when a guy says, “Hey, holla at me.” And a girl says, “I’m not your holler back girl.” We wanted something like pep rally vibes for schools, colleges, and teams to sing it any way they want, or interpolate it for their personal school or whatever.
Snoop Dogg, “Drop It Like It’s Hot” (2004)
“Drop It Like It’s Hot” was an experience. [We recorded in] Record Plant Studios, California. Snoop Dogg, Bishop Don Juan, Pharrell, me, friends, and a mist of smoke. We were vibing out. I won’t say I snuck in there, but it was just crazy. Pharrell put on the drum beat and Snoop laid the rhyme and we thought it was done. Then I played the keys.
Snoop is a genius. Pharrell is a genius. I thank them for laying the groundwork for a song like that. There’s a lot of influences that went into that song that set a vibe. Even like the “woo” and the clicking noises. They dropped the 808 and added the spray in and the ticking clock, and the rhymes and the drum patterns, and man, there was a lot to it. It’s always good when you see the music being played and just witness how the crowd reacts to it, and where it resonates with people. That’s what I look forward to. It’s been a great moment overall. It’s all been fantastic.
You were in the music video, too. How was that experience?
Yeah. I was just with a keyboard, but I would redo it. I wish. I did some weird expression. I was like, “Oh, cringe.” But I think they used it in the movie Pets.
Kelis, “Milkshake” (2003)
I had no idea that song was going to be big. I just knew it was going to be a banger, something to jam to and groove to. That’s sick.
Clipse, “Grindin’” (2002)
We did our job. It was inspired by the guys having a moment, rhyming. There was a keyboard that had those sounds. We just wanted to inspire people, and it’s great.
Britney Spears, “I’m a Slave 4 U” (2001)
The rhythm on that track was the authority from the very beginning, and our production work was led accordingly by way of the dance. Through the use of the Lexicon effects, it really did become a nod to the great producers of Minneapolis, like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
Jay-Z, “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)” (2000)
I flew into New York from Virginia and walked into a banger that P was working on with Jay. There was this energy, though. It was just Duro, a few people, and me. It was like, yo! So after a few fader slides and EQ rotations administered by Duro, I did my drops. If you ask me, we killed it on the SSL J9000. I’m proud to have been a part of that, and breaking down the record. I’ll take responsibility of breaking the beat where it happens. But again, genius work by Pharrell and Jay-Z. I tuned the sound. It’s been great. I remember Jay-Z when he started out at Future Records. I happened to play the sax on it, but I won’t forget he was there, and he’s also been a blessing to everybody.
Just about 20 years ago this year, Virginia Beach brothers Malice and Pusha T — aka Clipse — released their debut album, Lord Willin’, via Pharrell Williams’ Star Trak and Arista Records. However, longtime heads know that this was actually the duo’s second chance at making their first impression after a previous deal at Elektra Records resulted in the 1999 album Exclusive Audio Footage — an album that was shelved after the poor response to the lead single, “The Funeral,” resulting in the end of the duo’s record deal. Now, a couple of decades later, it seems things worked out okay.
Until now, though, only a handful of people had ever heard that first album, which never made it to stores. And while you could get ahold of it relatively easily due to leaked promotional versions that found their way online, as of today, you can simply open your favorite DSP. That’s right; Exclusive Audio Footage is now available for streaming — legally — for the first time in nearly 25 years. According to 2DopeBoyz, the album is mostly unchanged (likely thanks to producers The Neptunes’ approach of building beats from scratch rather than sampling), meaning you’re likely to hear references to Pusha’s old rap name, Terrar, and reworked versions of beats such as the one from Jadakiss’ “Knock Yourself Out” on the second track, “Hear Me Out.”
The update is sure to fuel the long-simmering rumors of a possible reunion of the sibling act, which has been on unofficial hiatus since 2010, with Malice going Christian rap as No Malice — his last album was Let the Dead Bury the Dead in 2017 — and Pusha continuing as the number-one coke rapper, who recently went No. 1 with his fourth studio album It’s Almost Dry (which No Malice also appears on). Those rumors were helped along by two more recent collaborations on albums from Kanye West and their designer friend and DJ, Nigo.
You can hear it for yourself via Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal.
Omar Apollo turned some eyeballs in his direction with his 2020 debut full-length project Apolonio, and now he’s getting ready to generate even more attention with Ivory, a new album that’s set to drop in early April. Fans have actually already heard a decent portion of the album, as Apollo has now shared five singles from it. That includes the new one from today, “Tamagotchi.”
If the production style of this one sounds familiar, that because The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) produced the song. On the smooth and sensual tune, sung in both English and Spanish, Apollo sings, “You with somebody, or are you cool? / I want your body, you want me too / I see you coming, I come for you / Need you around me, I know you do.”
Preceding “Tamagotchi” as Ivory singles are “Go Away,” “Bad Life,” “Invincible,” and “Killing Me.” Speaking of “Killing Me,” Apollo actually performed the track on The Tonight Show on March 11, the day of its release. He’s also got tour dates coming up this spring and summer.
Listen to “Tamagotchi” above.
Ivory is out 4/8 via Warner Records. Pre-order it here.
Omar Apollo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
In Search Of… supplied music fans and band affiliates with what they were searching for and more, and it all started with a group of friends looking to change the game. Of course, the story of Pharrell, Chad, and Shae meeting as students has been told plenty of times before. Hugo and P first linked at the school for the Gifted and Talented in Virginia Beach, before a 1992 talent show performance caught the attention of music great Teddy Riley. From there came the placements, from Noreaga’s “Superthug” to ODB’s “Got Your Money” to debut albums from Clipse and Kelis to Hov’s “I Just Wanna Love U.”
The Neptunes—which is how the duo chose to identify thanks to their affinity for Star Trek—were the hottest in the game, and besides a few Pharrell choruses and music video appearances, they were still keeping that magic relatively concealed behind-the-scenes in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.
“I think throughout the years, when the Neptunes were producing different songs, when Pharrell and I were making songs for other people, we would just set aside other beats and tracks that would be initially for the side project, N.E.R.D.,” Hugo recalls. “It started as a Neptunes project by the band, and then Pharrell and I started making music for other people and called that The Neptunes. And it wasn’t until later where Pharrell came up with the No One Ever Really Dies acronym.”
Making N.E.R.D. a trio, much like the band’s now-iconic logo that appeared on Pharrell’s go-to trucker hats, was a no-brainer. Chad reveals that Shae Haley, who would dance alongside the duo back in school, was always “down with us,” so the trio went to Master Sound in Virginia Beach and recorded what soon became In Search Of…, minus the live instrumentation.
“We had a four-track and recorded some stuff on it, put some demos on the TASCAM and came up with some basic grooves. I think Kelis was the first artist on Virgin and then N.E.R.D. followed,” Hugo recalls. “After they heard Kelis, the guys at the record label were interested in hearing what N.E.R.D. was about. So we presented that project.”
Using an ASR-10 sampler to chop up drums, with Pharrell distorting a clavichord (since Hugo had yet to learn guitar at the time), and recording it all on Pro Tools, N.E.R.D. laid down their first album, or at least its first version, based off of some tracks they kept for themselves over the years. But even the first version that Hugo felt was demo-like, released in Europe on Aug. 6, 2001, wasn’t necessarily something that Neptunes fans would be expected to immediately gravitate toward. It wasn’t meant for the clubs like their inescapable radio smashes. In fact, Hugo remembers going out at night and deciding that nightlife bangers would pretty much become the antithesis of N.E.R.D.’s sound.
“Pharrell had the Lexus at the time and we would just vibe out, man. And we would go to the clubs once in a while. But we wanted to do our own thing outside the clubs,” he says. “We made music for the clubs as the Neptunes, but I think we were just making stuff that was another dimension. We tried to make another world with N.E.R.D. The experience was all experimental as far as we were just making music, having fun. Enjoying each other’s company, making music at the same time and making interesting records that people hadn’t heard of.”
Despite the absence of the types of tracks that would put the Neptunes themselves on the map, N.E.R.D. still tapped their universe of Neptunes collaborators to play a role in shaping the band. As Hugo recalls, N.E.R.D. and Star Trak Entertainment, co-founded by Hugo and Williams with Walker, had their own clique, from Kelis to Clipse and everyone in between. It meant a lot to see the hip-hop community back them up, too. “We wanted to be part of a community and we wanted to try different things to see who would accept us,” Hugo says. “I didn’t know if hip-hop radio would take to it. We didn’t know if rock radio would take to it.”
Watching N.E.R.D. take shape was special for Walker, a longtime friend of the group’s members and eventual manager of the Neptunes, who pointed out that there were different versions of the group, with different members, before the trio of Chad, Pharrell, and Shae found its footing. One version had just called themselves The Neptunes. Plus, Star Trak wasn’t even formed at the time N.E.R.D. was born, either, but Walker was able to see his friends shine in ways they hadn’t yet before.
“This was a group that was sort of evolving and finding its own groove, sound, direction and focus,” Walker recalls. “I got to know the guys first as the Neptunes as producers and through working with them I got the chance to see them go through their bag of ideas and thoughts about what was to come. And that’s how I found out about N.E.R.D. It was always in development and happening [during] down time from producing for others or in between studio sessions. So hearing it start to form and have a real sound and direction of its own, you knew they were on to something special.”
For rock radio to accept the album with open arms and to make something completely unexpected and separate from the Neptunes, there needed to be rock elements, or at least some live funk elements. That’s how Spymob came into the picture. The Minnesota group had just been dropped by Epic Records after turning in their debut album and was open for work when a chance encounter between Pharrell and a shared lawyer led to Pharrell revealing that Spymob was his favorite band.
“In June, we got the call,” remembers drummer Fawcett, who founded the band in the early ‘90s alongside Paschke, bassist Christian Twigg, and singer/keyboardist John Ostby. “I got a call from Pharrell saying, ‘Hey, we made this album. It’s a group that we have called N.E.R.D, and we are thinking of rerecording it with real instruments. Are you guys interested in the band?’ We were all like, ‘Well, we don’t have anything else going on right now.’ They sent up a big Rock-It Cargo truck and we put all of our instruments in there. It was really important for Pharrell to have all of our vintage Ludwig drums, and Ludwig vintage guitars and old Rhodes piano and everything. He just wanted the Spymob sound on there.”
At the time, Fawcett didn’t know too much about Pharrell outside of him being the “I’m a hustler, baby” guy, but Pharrell knew a hell of a lot about Spymob. After their six-song 1998 demo that somehow wound up in the superstar producers’ hands, Hugo recalls that N.E.R.D. felt Spymob was “on a different level chord wise.”
“[Fawcett] flew out then to meet them at some point,” remembers guitarist Paschke. “I think that’s when Eric came back with a CD and said, ‘Want to play on this?’ And so we all had the CD and I remember listening to it thinking like, ‘God, this is really freaking cool. It’s really, really dope shit.’ And I was really excited too because 20 years back, it’s a little more complex to be matching up program drums and real drums and kind of doing that little mismatch of styles. So that was exciting for me. And I think for everybody.”
Re-recording the tracks in Virginia Beach, the band knocked out the sessions for the live-instrumentation version of the album in just a 10-day stretch. In an effort to include the “Spymob sound” on the album, Fawcett, Paschke, and their fellow band members even arranged their own Spymob demo version of In Search Of… to see what the N.E.R.D. thought of where they were at creatively. But, as they soon found out, Pharrell, Chad, and Shae were searching for something a little different.
Part of the magic of what Chad and Pharrell do is that they choose who they work with [in the same] way that they’ll choose a paint or they’ll build the palette. And so if they choose the right blue, they’re not going to worry how the blue’s going to perform when it hits the canvas or how it’s going to perform tomorrow. Just bring the blue.
“We thought that we would present these to the guys and they’d be like, ‘Oh yeah, Spymob. That’s so cool. It’s got Spymob on it.’ But when we pulled the sessions up, I remember Chad just went. ‘Yeah, nah. Let’s just have fun here.’ Those guys just really trust the moment,” Fawcett recalls of the summer 2001 sessions, which were more spur-of-the-moment than he expected. “I think about good hiring practices in businesses—you can save yourself a lot of work and worry later on if you just hire the right person. Part of the magic of what Chad and Pharrell do is that they choose who they work with [in the same] way that they’ll choose a paint or they’ll build the palette. And so if they choose the right blue, they’re not going to worry how the blue’s going to perform when it hits the canvas or how it’s going to perform tomorrow. Just bring the blue. And I think that’s what they did with us.”
During the recording of the 2002 release, Pharrell was across town chopping up an album with Brandy, likely 2002’s Full Moon, as Chad and Shae handled more of the day-to-day. But at the end of each night, Pharrell would show up at the studio to hear what Spymob would be cooking up.
For their part, Spymob filled in previously empty spaces on the demo version with muted drums, translating electronic guitar riffs to the real deal, and even moaning during the re-recording of “Things are Getting Better.” Listen closely, you’ll hear Fawcett, alright.
While N.E.R.D.’s process seemed a bit unconventional as they were balancing being the biggest production duo in the game while holding down sessions for a new rock-adjacent project, Spymob still trusted their instincts, even if that meant just making noise and seeing how it all progressed, as Chad often insisted they did.
“I remember thinking, ‘If Pharrell’s 50% of this, how could this possibly work?’ And like, ‘What if nothing is right?’ Calvinist work ethic, Midwestern sensibility definitely was alive and well in me,” Fawcett recalls. “Just like on any project, we wanted this to go really well. But at the same time we didn’t know what we were making.”
What N.E.R.D. and Spymob ended up making was a cross-genre classic—an album that despite a few negative reviews from Neptunes purists (and in-person slights from Randy Jackson of American Idol), would quickly earn a top-50 song on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart with “Rockstar,” peak at No. 31 on the R&B albums chart, and eventually spend 35 weeks on the Billboard 200.
“I think the live version gave it something different,” Walker says. “It gave it a different energy, it took it more into the alternative space and I think it kind of opened it, didn’t pigeonhole it to one direction. It was hip-hop. It was alternative rock. It then became a mixture of a bunch of different energies and sounds… It was special and it was definitely gonna take some time for people to get used to it, these young Black kids entering into this space where it was dominated, you know, by a different audience.”
If Chad, Shae, and Skateboard P were searching for decades of adoration from fans that were barely old enough to pick up on the Leonard Nimoy reference in the album’s title, or even play the Playstation game that Haley is transfixed on in the album’s updated cover, they certainly found it.
Leeds, who met Pharrell and Hugo while both he and Walker worked at Def Jam in the mid ‘90s, started touring with N.E.R.D. from around their third show onward. The N.E.R.D. years took him to Donatella Versace’s home for dinner one night, and even opening for David Bowie on a whim. But while he was just getting up to speed on The Neptunes’ career in hip-hop after working as tour manager for heavy metal bands in years prior, those first few N.E.R.D. gigs marked his first time hearing the album himself. And he insists he still hears the intro to “Brain” in his head every now and then.
“People didn’t really know what they were getting themselves into,” Leeds recalled of the early crowds. “They had seen Pharrell in videos, singing hooks on rap songs. A lot of people would come to an N.E.R.D. show, expecting it to be rap music, and were really surprised. On all the first tours, Spymob got the opening slot. So basically, people were very confused.”
Being on tour with N.E.R.D., Leeds—who ended up working for Billionaire Boys Club years down the line as his relationship with Pharrell grew—said he would consider himself part of the band in those early days. “Even the concept of ‘No One Every Really Dies’ and ‘nothing lasts forever,’ is really part of my operating system and my philosophy. You have to be in the moment and enjoy what you have when you have it. Nothing lasts forever, N.E.R.D. is gone, those days are gone, but I’m lucky to still have the friendships.”
And the music world is lucky to still have the music to provide ongoing inspiration. Songwriter Lily Lizotte, whose pop project THE BLSSM just earned them a Fueled By Ramen signing, still remembers the first show they ever went to as a kid being an N.E.R.D. gig, and their love for the album was sure to follow. “Discovering In Search of… and getting into N.E.R.D. was such an identifying experience for me,” The BLSSM says. “Everything visually and sonically represented a collage of cross cultures that felt so visceral, free, unique, and authentic. Listening to N.E.R.D. fulfilled everything I wanted, like they were fully genre-less and free. Rap, rock, funk, and R&B all cut from the same fabric sewn together with energy. The whole project just oozed with self-expression and they were SO incredibly ahead of their time.”
Of course, fans of the album have covered its songs throughout the last two decades, including The Internet, which first shared a rendition of “Tape You” back in 2016. Bassist Patrick Paige II says that he still hopes to someday put together chords that are as cool as those at the end of “Bobby James.”
“Hearing ‘Rockstar’ on KROQ, a rock station I used to love as a kid in 7th or 8th grade, not fully aware of who N.E.R.D. was or what kind of music they made, was my introduction, and I hadn’t even realized it,” Paige recalls. “I was more into rock at that age and a piece of this album still found its way to me through that avenue. I’d say that alone just goes to show how versatile and musical and such a reach that album really had.”
Paige adds that while their third album in 2008’s Seeing Sounds influenced his life on a deeper level than In Search Of…, “N.E.R.D. is a perfect example of freedom of expression and so much more beyond that, and I can’t really put any of their albums in a genre, and I don’t want to.”
Of course, the album had its haters, too. “Some people just have strong opinions,” Paschke said. “I think there’s some songs that their straight digital version might be better. We were also cautious. We didn’t want to lose our sound. So you go in to put big drums and guitars on ‘Rockstar.’ I was like, ‘No, I’m going to keep this crazy, weird, Fuzz Factory, gated guitar.’ Eric kept his funky old Ludwig drums. If we’d done that differently, taken a more traditional rock approach, it wouldn’t have had the effect that it does.”
The effect is undeniable. One of its biggest fans, who caught on when he was just 11 years old, is Tyler, The Creator. The multi-talented creative has cited the album as an influence for as long as he’s been in the game, from Camp Flog Gnaw reunions to tweets demanding that Walker hand over old-school N.E.R.D. beats.
Paschke met him a few years back, which marked an encounter that Tyler certainly was fan-boying over at the time. Even Fawcett’s 13-year-old daughter has a Tyler poster up in her room, and the N.E.R.D. connection has earned him his own cool-dad points.
“There is no expiration on your creativity and/or freedom of expression,” Walker says. “That’s what the album means to me 20 years later. I’m seeing a kid that doesn’t age. What it meant at the time is for kids to be themselves, have the courage to go out there and not be pigeonholed in one box and really explore with whatever they wanted to explore. And today, it’s good to see that the narrative is still going and you have artists like Tyler, The Creator that still carry that narrative. That you can be yourself and you don’t have to pigeonhole yourself into one category. And I think here we’re talking about music, but we also need to see it as having a much wider impact than music. It’s fashion, it’s culture. Pharrell specifically has had an important voice and street culture and fashion. He’s the one that had those brand partnerships with the big companies early on. This sound and movement has had so much impact and it’s been able to open doors and welcome many to have a voice.”
When Chad, now in the Songwriters Hall Of Fame, is asked to think back to the album itself, he treats the question almost like an acceptance speech, and rightfully so. “I’m thankful, man. Just really thankful. I thank God. I thank Pharrell and Shae and the crews that were behind us, the record labels and engineers and just the music community all in all. It’s a group effort to promote something and we just try to do what’s what’s right in life and continue to kind of make good decisions, what our parents tried to instill in us”
And at the end of my call with Hugo, I ask him a pretty standard question, to get a gist of just how much the project resonates with him still. I asked Chad what In Search Of… means to him today.
“Still searching,” he says.
