Williams and Hugo are also known as the Grammy-winning production duo The Neptunes.
N*E*R*D's sound is a blend of rock, hip-hop, and R&B. N*E*R*D stands for "No-one Ever Really Dies".
Williams and Hugo originally recorded the band's debut album, In Search Of..., for European release in 2001 using similar digital production techniques used on Neptunes-produced records. However, they decided that if N*E*R*D was to be different from The Neptunes, it should sound different. This led to them re-recording the album (still titled In Search Of...) with the power pop band Spymob for worldwide release in 2002.
In Search Of... achieved moderate success in the United States.: the album reached number 59 on the Billboard 200; its first single, Lapdance, reached the top 40 on the rap charts; and its second single, Rock Star, reached the top 40 of the modern rock charts in the US and is still incredibly popular today. "Lapdance" also went top 40 in the Netherlands and its music video received heavy airplay on American MTV2. The album was well-received by critics even though it was not as successful as many of the Neptunes' productions for other artists.
The album won the second annual Shortlist Music Prize, awarded (by a group of musicians, journalists, and other music professionals) for Best Album that had sold less than 500,000 copies at the time of nomination. The band performed at the show, bragging that the week prior to the ceremony, the album had, in fact, achieved gold status by selling over 500,000 units.
Fly or Die
The band recorded their second album Fly or Die during 2003. The band actually learned to play the tunes live, as Chad Hugo told MTV News on December 9, 2003: "We're the ones playing the instruments live this time. "I just started playing guitar last year so I'm learning as we go. Pharrell's playing drums. [Last time] we didn't have time to learn certain instruments so we got Spymob to help us out."
The band also recruited some assistance to record the album with Lenny Kravitz playing on the track Maybe (which has been featured in ads for XM Satellite Radio) and Joel Madden and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte playing on the track Jump. Several of the tracks discuss issues of particular concern to adolescents, for example Thrasher, which is about bullies; Drill Sergeant, about rebellion; and Backseat Love, which talks about first love.
Fly or Die went on sale on March 22, 2004. The album went top 10 in the USA, while the lead-off single, She Wants to Move, went top 5 in the UK, top 20 in Norway, Ireland, and Denmark, and top 30 in Australia and top 40 in the USA and the Netherlands. The music videos for "She Wants To Move" and its followup single, "Maybe", received strong support from music video stations globally.
In 2005, N.E.R.D ended their contract with Virgin Records. After becoming "hooked" on the energy from their fans, the band began recording their third studio album, spending their own money. Williams and Hugo later established Star Trak Entertainment, a subsidiary of Interscope Records.
Seeing Sounds
The third album from N*E*R*D is called Seeing Sounds. The album's title, as well as its content, revolves around the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia, the mixing of sensory modalities. After touring in promotion of their previous album, Fly or Die, N.E.R.D felt that album was too consistent. For their following album, they wanted to create the atmosphere of hyperactivity they knew their fans wanted.
The album debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200, selling 80,000 in its first week. It received mixed reviews, with critics lauding the production of the album. Some writers called the record N.E.R.D's best album to date, while others criticized Williams' singing and the album's content.
The album was released on June 10, 2008. The first single off the album, titled "Everyone Nose (All the Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom)" featured a video with fans as well as stars like Lindsay Lohan and Kanye West. In June 2008, the second single off the album, titled "Spaz", was used in a TV commercial for the Microsoft Zune. The third single "Sooner or Later" featured a video dedicated to America's economic crisis.
Nothing
In 2010, N.E.R.D announced the release of their fourth studio album entitled Nothing, which had a scheduled release date for September 7, 2010, but was pushed back to November 2, 2010. The first single from the album, "Hot-n-Fun" featuring Canadian recording artist Nelly Furtado, was released on May 18, 2010, on iTunes. It was released in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2010. On August 20, 2010, a track titled "Party People" leaked onto the internet. It was rumored to be the second single from the album. On September 28, 2010, they premiered another track from the album titled "Hypnotize U" on Late Show with David Letterman, produced by electronic music duo Daft Punk. On September 30, 2010, in an interview with Mark Hoppus on A Different Spin with Mark Hoppus, Pharrell explained the album cover as "a mix of so many things. The feathers represent the peace, and the helmet represents the war. It's like where we are right now. There's a lot of war, that people can't necessarily explain. The economy sucks, girls are still beautiful. We wanted to make music that reflected that. So people can look back twenty years from now, and say 'this is what was going on'". They then announced in the interview that the next two singles would be "I've Seen the Light" and "Hypnotize U". Pharrell described "Hypnotize U" as being "so different from the rest of the album", stating he was "very pleased because it serves a different purpose" in the album. On October 17, 2010, the standard edition and the deluxe edition of the album became available for pre-order on iTunes. Nothing debuted at number twenty one on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 20,000 copies.
The albums concept was to create a time capsule about America's divisions, "so that ten years from now people remember that era." Sonically the album was inspired by the late 60's and early 70's psychedelic pop.
Pharrell explained: "I just wanted to make some good music that would affect people in a good way." Williams says it wasn't easy. N*E*R*D worked on "a previous body of work which was really good, but it wasn't timeless to me. I didn't feel like we were pushing ourselves as much as we could. We needed to perfect the sound, so we kept pushing the date back until it was right." The result includes "a lot of vintage sounds...The album is very '68-'72, '73, America meets Crosby, Stills & Nash meets Moody Blues."
Nothing received mixed to positive reviews from most music critics.
NO_ONE EVER REALLY DIES
In 2013, Pharrell confirmed a N.E.R.D album was in progress, but also mentioned that the album would not be released that year due to the projects he was working on with other artists. He has also said the album will be "nature-based". The group reunited on December 26, 2014, to release the songs "Squeeze Me," "Patrick Star," and "Sandy Squirrel" for the film The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.
On February 6, 2017, during an interview with BBC Radio 1, Pharrell stated that "it's feeling really good, really special" about the group's return.
In October 2017, the album was teased after posters were popping up on the side of streets, and by concertgoers at the 2017 Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival.
It was preceded by three singles; "Lemon" with Rihanna, "1000" with Future, and "Don't Don't Do It!" with Kendrick Lamar.
The album was debuted with a live listening party during the first day at ComplexCon, thus revealing the tracklist. Pharrell revealed the album's cover art and release date via Instagram and Twitter on November 22, 2017.
NO_ONE EVER REALLY DIES was released on December 15, 2017 through I Am Other and Columbia Records. It features guest appearances from Rihanna, André 3000, Kendrick Lamar, M.I.A., Gucci Mane, Wale, Future and Ed Sheeran among others. The album presented a radical change in sound compared to Nothing, heavily influenced by 80's New Wave and Post-Punk.
“Mr. Williams had been listening to the nervy jangle of post-punk and avant-punk: Gang of Four, Suicide, Devo, Talking Heads,” the Times reported in a December profile. “Once I identified all my pieces,” Williams said, “I was like, ‘Yo, I don’t want to make any more linear songs.’ ” N.E.R.D’s fifth album, “NO ONE EVER REALLY DIES,” released in December, delights in the aimless, anything-plays spirit of post-punk and New Wave—an era that Pharrell, Chad Hugo, and Shay Haley watched firsthand as students of nineteen-eighties MTV."
To make sense of “NO ONE EVER REALLY DIES,” it helps to spend time with the cartoonish yelps of Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh on “Uncontrollable Urge” or David Byrne on “Life During Wartime.” Those front men both shout-sing somewhere higher than mid-range; Byrne has mentioned that, on “Once in a Lifetime,” he evoked the quivering timbre of a southern evangelical preacher whom he’d taped off of local radio. Fans are used to Pharrell’s many voices: the falsetto made famous on “Frontin’,” the breezy and conversational way that he rapped on “Mr. Me Too,” even the showman croon on “Happy.” But this latest voice, on such tracks as “Rollinem 7’s” and “ESP,” searches for a slightly goofball tone that offsets stone-serious messages, like “What possessed the slave to look in the river / Then he saw his true master, fuck is a ‘mister’?” and “Detach yourself, repack yourself / Be back yourself, and dream as yourself.” Many music fans winced at the sight of the new album’s credits, worried that its several guest slots meant a muddy, scattered N.E.R.D. project, but the most unexpected voice on it belongs to Pharrell, who finds new angles for his instrument almost fifteen years in.
This shape-shifting extends to the album’s production, an unrelenting tangle of stuttering rhythms, tempo changes, bridges, and every other misdirection the band can jam in. “Lemon,” the opening track, is the most generous to pop form, and “Deep Down Body Thurst” takes traditional N.E.R.D. piano chords and lays them under new, challenging shapes. You can hear shades of the song’s stomping guitar in the English Beat’s “Mirror in the Bathroom,” itself a mutation of the ska sound that took hold in the U.K. “Don’t Don’t Do It!” pushes through its hook in the same fashion: while the verses are smooth and bluesy, the chorus bursts open in three steamy riffs. (“Don’t, don’t do it!” “They’re gonna do it anyway!” “They. Are. Go-nna. Do. It anyway!”) “Kites” is just as sprawling, bobbing between a double-time punk stomp and trunk-melting trap as Kendrick Lamar and M.I.A. vent about flying over borders and walls on both ends of the beat.
NO_ONE EVER REALLY DIES received positive reviews from music critics.
Brain
N*E*R*D Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
What do you think baby?
I know I want you
And you know you want me
But can you promise please
You'll say yes to me
I love how you think
You think oh so deep
I buzz then fall asleep
Do your really even love me? (Do you really even love me?)
If you do there is no pain (it's a heavy love)
Do I really even love you? (Or do I like?)
Or do I really love your brain?
Brain
I just love your brains
Brain
Girl unlatch your bra
But first unlatch your jaw
It's cool to call me dog
But your head is under my paw
Soon as your lips part
Then your tongue it starts
My pulse just races hard
Enough to pop my heart
I'm so high
Do your really even love me? (Do you really love me?)
If you do there is no pain (I don't feel that shit)
Do I really even love you? (Do I love you?)
Or do I really love your brain? (Ah, ah, ah)
Brain (ah, ah, ah)
I just love your brains
Brain
Hands up, if you feel like that (yeah, yeah)
Hands up, if you feel like that (yeah, yeah)
Hands up, if you feel like that (yeah, yeah)
Huh, what? (Hey, hey)
Hands up, if you feel like that (yeah)
Hands up, if you feel like that (yeah)
Hands up, if you feel like that (yeah)
Huh, what? (Hey, hey)
The things you think on me
The games you play on me
And stay the day on me
The words you say on me
When we party hop
Bathroom counter top
Or in your old man's truck
Grocery parking lot
Do your really even love me? (Do you love me?)
If you do there is no pain (how could this be love?)
Do I really even love you? (Do I love you?)
Or do I really love your brain? (Ah, ah, ah)
Brain (ah, ah, ah)
I just love your brains (so smart)
Brain
I just love your brains (ah, ah, ah)
Brain (ah, ah, ah)
I just love your brains
Brain (ah, ah, ah, hey)
Yo, I love what you doing to me right now
It's the best
In the front seat of my car
On the hood of my truck
What we gon' do tomorrow? I got an idea (let's fuck)
I'm orgasmically narcoleptic (ugh)
The lyrics to "Brain" by N*E*R*D are about the singer's infatuation with someone's mind rather than just their physical appearance. The song addresses the idea of whether or not the love between two people is solely based on physical attraction or if it goes deeper and is based on true compatibility of thoughts and emotions. In the first verse, the singer acknowledges that they are attracted to the person and their deep thoughts. They ask if the other person feels the same and if they can promise to say yes to them. The chorus poses the question of whether love is solely based on physical attraction or if it's based on the other person's mind and personality. The second verse continues with the physical attraction motif by telling the person to unlatch their bra and jaw. The singer describes how the person's touch and words make them feel alive, almost like a drug-induced high.
Line by Line Meaning
What do you think baby
Asking the partner what they are thinking and feeling in the moment.
I know I want you
Expressing a strong desire for the partner.
And you know you want me
Acknowledging that the partner also has feelings for the singer.
But can you promise please
Asking for a commitment from the partner.
You'll say yes to me
Specifically asking for the partner's agreement to something.
I love how you think
The singer admires the way the partner thinks and processes information.
You think oh so deep
Acknowledging the partner's intelligence and depth of thought.
And share your thoughts with me
Grateful that the partner is willing to share their thoughts and feelings with the artist.
I buzz then fall asleep
The partner's conversation and presence is stimulating but also calming to the artist.
Do your really even love me
If you do there is no pain
Do I really even love you
Or do I really love your brain
I just love your brains
Questioning if the relationship is based on true love or just an attraction to the partner's intelligence and thoughts.
Girl unlatch your bra
But first unlatch your jaw
It's cool to call me dog
But your head is under my paw
Asking the partner to be more physically intimate, while also attempting to assert a dominant position in the relationship.
Soon as your lips part
Then your tongue it starts
My pulse just races hard
Enough to pop my heart
I'm so high
The partner's kiss and conversation causes the artist's heart rate to increase and puts them in a state of euphoria.
Hands up, if you feel like that
(3x)
Yeah
Huh what
(2x)
Head
Encouraging the partner to dance or move in response to the music.
The things you think on me
The games you play on me
And stay the day on me
The words you say on me
When we party hop
Bathroom counter top
Or in your old man's truck
Grocery parking lot
Reflecting on the variety of settings and experiences that the singer has shared with the partner, and how their interactions have played out in those different environments.
Do your really even love me
Repeating the earlier questioning of whether the relationship is based on true love or just a physical attraction to the partner's intelligence.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Chad Hugo, Pharrell Williams
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind