Nothing to hide

Curious to know what a collaboration between Pharrell and Daft Punk would sound like? Now you can satisfy that curiosity - and I don't know how this has managed to skip my radar for so long! Here's the new single from N*E*R*D, co-written and produced by Daft Punk. Smooth and sexy track, just as the video.



n-e-r-d.com
http://www.myspace.com/nerdofficial

Mr. Oizo with Pharrell Williams (short-film)

Remember Mr. Oizo and the famous puppet Flat Eric from the 90's? Well, Mr. Oizo has just directed a short-film called Where's The Money George and it's with (the always amazing) Pharrell Williams! How the two of them got together is not quite clear but some are speculating this could be some sort of teaser for new music they are doing. Discover below:

New N.E.R.D. with Santigold!

Via pitchfork (via Kanye West's blog), here's the new N.E.R.D. song featuring Santigold. Very punk rock, Santi still reminds me of early Blondie, she could be have been doing this stuff on CBGB's in the late 70's early 80's. Amazing really. Click here to check out Soldier.

A music video made of 9580 paper dolls

As a way to celebrate its 100th anniversary, american brand Converse commissioned a music video for "My Drive Thru", a song produced by and with Pharrell Williams feat. Santogold and Julian Casablancas (from The Strokes). If the Pharrell song is amazing (as always), the video kicks some serious ass!!! Directed and animated by Psyop, the ideas behind this were to express connectivity and an existing print campaign, where different artists, as paper cutouts, are connected by their feet (their Chucks are a symbolic link). The highly elaborated process ends up with a simple and effortless handmade feeling and that is what is so surprising and inspiring. Check the video bellow:

N*E*R*D - Seeing Sounds

While the general view is that The Neptunes glory days are almost gone, their production is still as great as ever, with some fine examples coming in the last couple of years for the likes of Clipse (the masterstroke album that is "Hell Hath No Fury") and some shit-hot songs for Jay-Z ("Blue Magic"), Gwen Stefani ("Yummy") and Britney Spears ("Why Should I Be Sad"), amongst many others. And after beating rival Timbaland and winning the best moments in "Hard Candy", no one should be blamed for expecting the best on this third album for their side project N*E*R*D. The news that this time they didn't have a label and were supporting it with their own money added some extra interest, as if this would be a perfect moment to capture these guys doing what they really like with no external pressures. And now that "Seeing Sounds" is finally here, what's the verdict? Confounding expectations, this album needs more than a few listens to be completely understood, such are the many twists and external influences that it incorporates, sometimes in the space of just one song. Without the sensual atmosphere of "In Search of..." and the catchy and immediate hooks of "Fly Or Die", "Seeing Sounds" prefers to be an intricate showcase of the many tricks and styles these guys are capable of: drum'n'bass beats, funky organs, dirty bass lines, kitsch arrangements, hard rock guitar solos, weird grooves, distorted percussions, r&b melodies, psychedelic choruses, you name, it's here, in a multitude of layers and textures for each of these 12 songs. The bottom line being that few people are so passionate about music as Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo and their partner-in-crime for this project Shay Haley, and the urgency felt in "Seeing Sounds" is only a testimony for that. (7,5/10)

N*E*R*D - Spaz (live video)



MySpace page
Official site

N*E*R*D - Everyone Nose (All The Girls Standing In Line For The Bathroom) (video)

Back with a fantastic old-school hip-hop flavored song, Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo and Shay Haley surely had a lot of fun while recording this video, the first one taken from forthcoming album "Seeing Sounds". And while the lyrics refer to female cocaine usage in clubs, the video takes it literally and is no less crazy oriented, featuring Lindsay Lohan, Kanye West, a few NSFW images and getting a strong inspiration from what is usually seen in websites like Last Nights Party (who, incidentally, were at the shot).

MySpace page
Official site

Madonna - Hard Candy

[review by JP]

Madonna’s 2005 "Confessions on a Dancefloor" album placed her on a future-disco mood where there was some intention to mix the freedom and joy of a dance song with the deepness of some of the ideas expressed in the lyrics. But truth to be told, the album lacked intimacy between her and the listener. For die-hard Madonna fans, the darkness of some of her best songs such as “Substitute For Love”, “Paradise (Not For Me)”, “I Deserve It” or “X-Static Process” was missing. Even if enjoyable and highly successful, I think the record was a bit of an empty affair.

Fast-forward to 2008 and there she is again. And this time there’s the best of the two Madonna’s in the same “candy” package. There’s the Madonna who screams the joy of dance and freedom on tracks such as “Give It 2 Me” or “Heartbeat”, with such lyrics as “Can’t you see when I dance I feel free?” reminding us that the cool young girl who wrote songs such as "Into the Groove" has gone nowhere. But if, like me, you really enjoy her more personal writing, there’s some goodies in the bag as well. More about each song:

Candy Shop
The album's opener is a dirty little track where the lyrics reveal a sense of humor that she hasn’t used for a while in her writing. “My sugar is raw / sticky and sweet” she sings over a clever hip-hop meets electronica arrangement created by Pharrell Williams. Great opener for the record, a very seducing invitation to her “store”.

4 Minutes
The first single, a duet with Justin Timberlake. It’s actually one of the least effective tracks on the album, a great beat but somehow over-produced. She sounds lost in the middle of the production (blame Timbaland) and it’s just an odd choice for the first single since there are much better tracks on this confection.

Give It 2 Me
Ok so now we’re talking, Madonna and Pharrell turn the fun booster on in this bouncy track that will be the record’s second single. It’s mostly a self-empowering song that will get everyone dancing. “What are you waiting for, nobody’s gonna show you how” she sings, adding that “When the lights go down and there’s no one left I can go on and on”. As if we didn’t know that. Pharrell’s clever production joins electro elements, an amazing breakdown where they sing “Get stupid! Get stupid!” and it’s a total sugar high.

Heartbeat
Still Pharrell on the dance-floor with Madonna, where she asks us “Don’t you know, can’t you see? / When I dance I feel free". Everyone knows and loves this Madonna. Still very electro over an hip-hop arrangement, something that I quite like on this record. One of the best tracks.

Miles Away
Back to Timbaland, this isn’t by any way a ballad but it’s very mid-tempo and beautiful. Accoustic guitars, strong dry beats, and some great lyrics where she says “I guess we’re at our best when we’re miles away / You always have the biggest heart when we’re six thousand miles apart” (now we know not everything is perfect inside the Ritchie’s family house). Very personal lyrics but all in a perfect-pop fashion. This will be played to death by radios everywhere, write it down.

She’s Not Me
Back to Pharrell for another one of the album’s highlights. This starts like a disco song about a relationship gone wrong, where she says that whatever the new lover can bring the guy, she’s not her and she never will be. The track is very funky and by the second half, it turns really electro as well. I love what Pharrell did here, the song is very rich and kind of takes you on a sonic journey. He guest vocals in the end and his singing is totally amazing! Wendy Melvoin, the guitarist of Prince and The Revolution fame, funks up the guitar hook on this one.

Incredible
Very close to the previous one in structure but very melodic and I’m hearing this can be a single. It’s kind of like she’s saying she wants to go back to the first days of a relationship where everything is perfect and beautiful. I get the sense that she’s not 100% happy in her marriage, or at least the lyrics on “Hard Candy” seem to reflect that (and Madonna does write her own lyrics, she always did, even if she gets her co-producers to shape them into the song).

The Beat Goes On
Very different to the leaked version that surfaced online a few months ago. That was simply a demo, here she and Pharrell go nuts and fuck up the elements of that demo. Pharrell does the back-chorus singing “Get down / Beep beep!” and it’s great fun. Kanye West drops by for a guest rap and it fits perfectly. One of the best songs of the package.

Dance 2Night
Back with Justin Timberlake again, it’s like a late 70’s / early 80’s disco tune where they both do a bit of a “boy meets girl on the dance-floor” escapism thing. Very nice, I sense an early Michael Jackson influence here but maybe it’s just me.

Spanish Lesson
Ok, this is the worst track here. Latin beats and guitars and very cliché lyrics. It’s not bad but it’s the filler of the album. You can listen to it and have fun but it’s very empty.

Devil Wouldn't Recognize You
As the album gets closer to the end the lyrics get more dense, which by now is a common Madonna standard (“Secret Garden”, “Mer Girl”, “Gone”, “Easy Ride”, “Like it or Not”...). I’m not into this song because Timbaland re-uses a lot of his own clichés, think "Cry Me a River". It’s a huge ballad with great lyrics and it would have an impact on the US Top 40 but nothing close to the creative heights of what she achieved with Pharrell on the previous tracks.

Voices
Love this one. Starts with an acapella of Justin asking “Who is the master and who is the slave?” and the whole thing is like questioning if you are walking the dog or the dog is walking you. Very clever lyrics and a huge orchestral instrumentation. She’s singing about someone who has demons and the whole thing just makes a fantastic end to the record.

So the verdict here is that it’s a way better record than “Confessions…” was. The lyrics are all great and the production is stellar. She achieves her best moments with Pharrell Williams on production, not Timbaland. Pharrell and Madonna go to the same levels of creative chemistry she had with Mirwais or William Orbit. To me, that makes this album the perfect blend of US street sound culture with a more european electronic sensibility that we know from her latest records.

Next, I hear she’s going on tour…

Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor / Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury

After the disappointment felt with the new Jay-Z record (the louder is not the better...) here are two albuns set to become two of this year's best hip-hop albuns, each one representing a different side of it.
Lupe Fiasco is a protegee of Kanye West and his presence and influence is largely felt in this debut album: the luxurious orchestrations and the soul samples are all around, being the basis to elegant and smooth anthems, while his lyrics are very far from the usual hip-hop cliches and look more into some intelligent issues. An album that is also an homage to the history of black music, searching the past to build its own timeless present.
Hell Hath No Fury by hip-hop duo Clipse is a whole different story. Entirely produced by the Neptunes, it looks straight into the future, exploring the different possibilities that can be obtained with a beat and its different variations. Simple, incisive, direct and even exploring some dark tones, it's a good way to show how to obtain maximum results with minimum-stripped-down resources. Best of all, and to our luck, Pharrell Williams & Chad Hugo's production hadn't been this effective and straight-to-the-point for a long time, resulting in addictive and soon-to-be-hip-hop-classics.

Pharrell - In My Mind

After one long year of innumerous delays, here it is, finally, the first solo album from Pharrell Williams, best known as the frontman of super-producers duo The Neptunes or rock band N*E*R*D. In the last decade, he was partly responsible for some of the biggest music revolutions operated inside the mainstream. Britney Spears, Kelis, Nelly, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake, Gwen Stefani? Just some of the big names that, at some point in their careers, were helped by The Neptunes magic touch. And now the big question: does he still have it? And the big answer: Yes! Divided in two parts, the first half of In My Mind is all hip-hop, with intelligent and sophisticated beats, exploring a multitude of atmospheres, while the second half is a homage to r&b and soul music, assuming influences from Prince, Michael Jackson or even Chaka Khan, full of catchy and addictive songs. And, of course, we have his production skills, which are intact: vintage samples, old-school keyboards, geometric sounds, a scientific attention to details and an addictive vibe. So although this album has been critically panned in most of its reviews, i believe that has to do with other factors, beyond the music itself. Verdict: Underrated project of the year.

Music Videos # 10

Pharrell feat. Kanye West - Number 1


What happens when you put together two style-obsessed-hip-hop-super-stars-with-big-egos? A big vanity fair, of course, full of designer clothes, expensive fashion accessories and a super catchy song obviously titled "Number 1" . See for yourself.

Polaroids # 1

Franz Ferdinand live at Parque Tejo, Lisbon (07-06-2006)



Pharrell live at Parque Tejo, Lisbon (08-06-2006)