You guys remember when this happened right?
I sure as hell do; I’ve rarely been as excited about anything*, and I waited — WAITED! — for months for the results to come out. Finally, yesterday, they did.
Go listen here. Also listen to the whole album, which is like having a Weekender in a single playlist, only if the Weekender featured Kendrick and Andre 3000 and MIA and … Ed Sheeran? Okay.
N.E.R.D. is a long-time project of Pharrell’s (and friends), but the kind of long-time project that friends do together because they like to do it, but also like to do other stuff, so the project that they do together is one that they do together when time or exigency or creativity allows, rather than at the whims of a record label or coke habit or something. And, fwiw, N.E.R.D. is one of those Music for Music Lovers kinds of projects, all trippy beats and wild sample loops and whatever vocal technique fits the bill at any given time. Good stuff. This Billboard article breaks it down really well. I hadn’t even thought of N.E.R.D. when that photo of Pharrell with Uika and Momo first happened — that’s how hard I’d forgotten that N.E.R.D. was ever a thing. What a weird turn of events!
Now, of course I appreciate the fact that idols, particularly one idol who I particularly like and the only idol for whom I break all decorum around not indulging in idol worship specifically to worship her for being the most perfect thing ever created by gods or man, and I’m not going to be one of those “FEH THEY’RE BARELY IN IT FEH!” FARTFARTFART types about it. Instead, I will bemusedly speculate as to exactly how many hours Momo and Uika had to be in the studio to record like a literal sentence’s worth of vocals, and in how many takes. I want to pretend that they smash-bang were in and out without so much as half of a sweat, but we all know better — NIGO alone probably had them sweating away in the booth for most of an afternoon, only to have Pharrell come in and demand re-take after re-take, like some kind of twisted Nationwide Insurance commercial made real.
Or, more likely, Pharrell walked in, was temporarily blinded by being in the presence of human perfection, begged for the BILLIE IDLErs to please record their parts and get out, as no mortal has any right to witness the truest splendor of the divine and indeed may die from the very effort, and the man has kids and stuff, and so it was. That’s definitely how it happened.
*It created one of the weirdest tensions ever between I, a humble idol website guy, and some fans who were quite disturbed that idols were working with American pop stars, because corruption
What’s it with Japanese women staying up all night? First we get Daoko with Beck on his latest single “Up all Night” then we get First Summer and Momo singing “up all night” with Pharrell. Get some sleep ladies.
Uika was in Pharrell’s “Happy” video (along with the rest of BiS at the time), so I like to think Pharrell is sure to call up his pals Uika and Nigo whenever he’s in town. And Funassyi 😛
It’s time all of them Uikatachis get solo careers so they can individually featured as featuring like Andre3000 and MIA. ^_^