
Come get it Troper!
Pharrell Lanscilo Williams (born April 5, 1973) is an American singer-songwriter and producer. He has produced, co-produced, and remixed many songs and albums for various artists, including (but definitely not limited to) Clipse, Jay-Z, Maroon 5, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, and Snoop Dogg.
In addition to his production work, he is also the lead singer of the Hip-Hop and Rock band N*E*R*D, and one half of the production duo The Neptunes (consisting of him and Chad Hugo). He has also served as composer for a number of films.
Discography:
With N*E*R*D
- In Search Of... (2001/2002)
- Fly Or Die (2004)
- Seeing Sounds (2008)
- Nothing (2010)
- NO_ONE EVER REALLY DIES (2017)
Solo
- In My Mind (2006)
- G I R L (2014)
- Black Yacht Rock Vol. 1: City Of Limitless Access (as Virginia) (2024)
Filmography:
Films scored:
- Despicable Me 1 (2010)
- Despicable Me 2 (2013)
- The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015) (With N*E*R*D)
- Hidden Figures (2016)
- Despicable Me 3 (2017)
- Despicable Me 4 (2024)
Himself
Because I'm tropin':
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Tropes about N*E*R*D
- Aerith and Bob: Chad is a common name, Pharrell is a less common name, and Shay is somewhere in the middle
- Childhood Friends: Pharrell and Chad met at a camp for musically gifted and talented children when they were 12, and met Shay at school.
- Corrupt Politician: Pharrell compares them to strippers in "Lapdance", in the way how they make a lot of big promises like a stripper offering a free lapdance, but cannot and will not live up to them.
- Darkest Hour: Sooner or later, it all comes crashing down...
- Fun with Acronyms: N*E*R*D stands for "No One Ever Really Dies".
- Genre Mashup: His work with N*E*R*D is a highly eclectic mix of Alternative Rock, Funk Rock, Electronic Music, Hip-Hop and R&B.
- Good Bad Girl: "She Wants To Move" is an ode to this trope. Sadly, the girl she's talking about is stuck with a boyfriend who won't let her be.
- Justified Criminal: "Provider", hoo boy. The song is sung from the point of view of a teenager who was spurned by a friend of his to get into the drug business due to his extremely poor economic state. He got kicked out of school by trying out some cocaine, and is now a drug dealer who works every night to give some money to his girlfriend. He fully comprehends that what he's doing is destructive, though, and wishes he could stop selling drugs and become a normal person with a loving family.
- Mood Whiplash: Their discography is chock-full of this:
- On In Search Of…:
- The synth-laden Girl-on-Girl is Hot-themed tune “Tape You” is followed by “Run To The Sun”, a ballad about death (that many confuse for a love song) that Pharrell wrote for his dying grandmother.
- On the original "electronic" version, "Run To The Sun" is preceded by "Truth Or Dare", a song about A Party, Also Known as an Orgy.
- On both the "electronic" and "rock" versions, “Am I High” ends with a fade out of the instrumental, which includes a soft, graceful piano playing. This can make Pharrell’s shout of “FUCKING POSERS” at the beginning of the next song, “Rock Star”, just a little jarring to some.
- On Fly Or Die:
- The opening track, “Don’t Worry About It” is a smooth, funky song that has Pharrell crooning like James Brown. It’s followed by the album’s title track, which is a fast-paced song about teenage angst and suicide.
- On Seeing Sounds:
- The album’s intro, which has Pharrell monologuing about his childhood in Virginia Beach over a Pixar-esque instrumental, is attached to the aggressive, sexually-charged “Time For Some Action”
- In a similar vein, “Kill Joy”, a rather fast-paced and aggressive-sounding song about the fakeness of people in popular crowds, is followed by “Love Bomb”, a grand and orchestral song about spreading love and peace instead of war and hatred.
- On Nothing:
- “Help Me”, which is fairly angry and desperate-sounding, is followed by “Victory”, which is very innocent-sounding and hopeful.
- “Life As A Fish” is built on this trope. To symbolize the contrast between the serenity of life under the sea and the chaos and destruction caused by humans, the song alternates between being ethereal and lulling to loud and discordant.
- On NO_ONE EVER REALLY DIES:
- Pharrell’s verses on “1000” have him singing about what could happen if all Americans came together to create change. Meanwhile, guest rapper Future uses his verse to show off his wealth, listing purchases that “cost thousands”. Unsurprisingly, many fans consider Future’s verse to be out of place with the rest of the song.
- “Secret Life Of Tigers”, a harsh, pulsating dance track about rebelling against conservative parents (which some have also interpreted as being about the LGBTQ community) is followed by “Lifting You”, a slow reggae-inspired track that features Ed Sheeran and has Pharrell singing in a questionable Caribbean accent.
- On In Search Of…:
- A Party, Also Known as an Orgy: "Truth or Dare". The original version of the song starts with Pharrell screaming "ORGY!!!" just to hammer the point home.
- Police Brutality: One of the main themes of NO_ONE EVER REALLY DIES, particularly in "Don't Don't Do It!" - one of the song's verses lists places where recent and controversial events of such trope happened.
- Pretender Diss: "Rock Star" calls out everyone who keeps saying they're gonna make the big time, only to chicken out when the limelight is on them.
- Rearrange the Song: The band's debut album In Search of... was rerecorded as a more Rap Rock album in 2002 with the help of Funk Rock band Spymob. According to Pharrell, this was due to the band deciding to having their musical style become different from the Neptunes than being seen as just the Neptunes under a different name, which also allowed them to play their own instruments as well as perform and tour easily.
- Trauma Conga Line: The titular protagonist of “Bobby James”. At the beginning of the song it’s already established he has a rough home life, with things not being much better at school. Then pushers introduce him to drugs (theorized by listeners to be cocaine), which cause him to spiral into an addiction that controls his life. He then runs away from home and ends up on the other side of the country (from Virginia to California), with the implication being that he died there, far from his family and friends.
Tropes about The Neptunes
- Berserk Button: While they definitely don’t go “berserk” by any definition, both get annoyed whenever someone brings up their different races and focus on their differences rather than their similarities.
- The same can be said with Pharrell whenever someone refers to his synesthesia as a “medical condition”.
- Bowdlerise: The Youtube remaster of “Frontin’” felt that the line “tear your ass up” was inappropriate, so they decided to censor it. This would make sense if they hadn’t decided that the word they need to mute was “tear”, which actually just makes the line sound dirtier.
Tropes about Skateboard P
- Genre Shift: "In My Mind" has him shift from pop to hip-hop.
- In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: "Skateboard P presents Show You How to Hustle".
Tropes about his solo work
- The Cameo: Daft Punk do the chorus on "Gust of Wind". In the music video, they're represented by large statues of their helmets, which light up and hover as the song progresses.
- Creator Thumbprint: When Pharrell produces a song - his own work or someone else's - his version of a "producer tag" is to repeat the first beat of the song four times in a row.
- Genre Shift: In his early work as a performer, especially as a feature on popular singles like Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot", he was a straight-up pop rapper. Though never fully giving up hip-hop and rap-style delivery, with the success of his feature on "Get Lucky" and his immensely popular single "Happy", he shifted to a soul-funk sound with live/organic-sounding instruments and much more singing.
- Heads or Tails?: The coin-flip imagery is used as a metaphor for someone Living a Double Life in the song "Double Life":Your life double-sided
Two-faced like coins
What side do I get?
Which side are you on?
[...]
It doesn't matter to you if you get heads or tails
You just don't like to flip all the time
But if you spin it, then you get to see both sides
Oh, the thrill of the double life - The Idealist: "Happy" is all about this trope.
- Merry in Minor Key: "Happy" is in F minor and is almost maddeningly upbeat.
- Ordinary People's Music Video: “Happy”
is made from a 24-hour long supercut which filmed a lot of ordinary people, a few celebrities, and occasionally Williams himself dancing to the song on the streets of Los Angeles.
