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.
Perfect Defect
N*E*R*D Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I would bump, into
The creme de la creme, that's you
But they treat you like, doo doo
So then you had to use, my wit
And think a-bout it
That's when I had to admit
They were right, you're the shit
[Chorus]
I don't care who gets you
I don't care what they don't see
I don't need God to remix you
It's less for them, but mo' for meee!
Oh you're so perfect, oh don't ignore me girl
Them other girls just service, they do nuttin' for me girl
Oh you're so perfect, don't you ignore me girl
Ain't no need to be nervous, this'll workout surely girl
Let's take it slow, to begin
Don't worry I got the blueprint
Get to know you, then we win
Friends to love, the end
I know it's always, somethin'
But they ain't talkin' 'bout, nothin'
This is my car, jump in
Cinderella, no pumpkin
[Chorus]
Yeah, why?
Ahh c'mon cheer up baby
You know I make you laugh
Meet Tina, Tonya, Tracy
We're havin' a bubble bath
The girls are blowin' bubbles
They naked in the field
The smoke comes out the flowers
Mm-hmm, you know the deal
[Chorus]
Oh you're so perfect, oh don't ignore me girl
Them other girls just service, they do nuttin' for me girl
Oh you're so perfect, don't you ignore me girl
Ain't no need to be nervous, this'll workout surely girl
Oh you're so perfect, oh don't ignore me girl
Them other girls just service, they do nuttin' for me girl
Oh you're so perfect, don't you ignore me girl
Ain't no need to be nervous, this'll workout surely girl
[Chorus]
The song "Perfect Defect" by N*E*R*D conveys a story of a person who is different and unique but is not well-accepted by society. It talks about a girl who is not popular or well-liked but is perfect in her own way. The first verse describes the day when the singer first met this girl, who is referred to as the "creme de la creme." Despite her unusual qualities, she is treated poorly by others. The singer steps up to defend her, using his wit to bring out her true value, admitting that she is indeed extraordinary.
In the chorus, the singer expresses his interest in the girl and how much he values her despite what others may perceive. He appreciates her for her perfect defects and refuses to let others influence his feelings towards her. He makes it clear that what others might pass off as a flaw is what makes her perfect, unique, and special in his eyes.
The second verse talks about the singer taking the girl slow, getting to know her better as a friend because friendship is the cornerstone of any successful relationship. In the end, however, he is confident that it will all work out for the best.
The song has a catchy upbeat tempo, and the overall message is one of acceptance, individualism, and perseverance. It encourages listeners to embrace their imperfections and love themselves despite what others might say.
Line by Line Meaning
First day of school, guess who?
The singer is referring to meeting someone important on the first day of school.
I would bump, into
The singer stumbled into someone important.
The creme de la creme, that's you
The singer is complimenting the person they met, indicating they are special and high-quality.
But they treat you like, doo doo
Despite being special, the person is treated poorly and undervalued by others.
So then you had to use, my wit
The person had to rely on the artist's intelligence to cope with being treated unfairly.
And think a-bout it
The person had to contemplate their situation and how to deal with it.
That's when I had to admit
The singer had to accept and acknowledge the person's special qualities and the unfairness of how they were treated.
They were right, you're the shit
The artist recognizes that the person truly is exceptional and valuable.
I don't care who gets you
The artist is committed to being with this person, regardless of other people's opinions or potential competition.
I don't care what they don't see
The artist is not concerned with others failing to understand or acknowledge the person's worth.
I don't need God to remix you
The singer is satisfied with the person as they are, and doesn't need any changes or improvements.
It's less for them, but mo' for meee!
Other people may not see the value in the person, but the artist personally benefits from being with them.
Let's take it slow, to begin
The singer wants to start the relationship slowly and get to know the person better.
Don't worry I got the blueprint
The singer has a plan for the relationship and can guide it in a positive direction.
Get to know you, then we win
The goal is for the singer to become close to the person and for the relationship to be successful.
Friends to love, the end
The artist wants to start as friends and develop a strong and long-lasting romantic relationship.
I know it's always, somethin'
There may be obstacles or issues that arise, but the artist is willing to work through them.
But they ain't talkin' 'bout, nothin'
Other people may try to interfere or create problems, but their concerns are unfounded and irrelevant.
This is my car, jump in
The singer is ready to go on a journey or adventure with the person, and they should come along for the ride.
Cinderella, no pumpkin
The artist wants to sweep the person off their feet and provide them with the best possible experience, like in the story of Cinderella.
Ahh c'mon cheer up baby
The artist is trying to cheer up the person, who may be feeling down or upset.
You know I make you laugh
The artist is skilled at making the person happy, and their laughter is proof of this.
Meet Tina, Tonya, Tracy
The singer wants to introduce the person to their friends or other people in their social circle.
We're havin' a bubble bath
The artist and their friends are engaged in a playful and enjoyable activity, like taking a bubble bath.
The girls are blowin' bubbles
The singer's female friends are participating in the fun, innocent activity of blowing bubbles.
They naked in the field
The singer's friends may be carefree and uninhibited, enjoying the outdoors and nature while unclothed.
The smoke comes out the flowers
The natural environment may be enhanced or altered in some way, like when smoke is produced by burning certain plants.
Mm-hmm, you know the deal
The artist is implying that the person is aware of the situation and what is going on.
Oh you're so perfect, oh don't ignore me girl
The artist reaffirms the person's exceptional qualities and emphasizes their interest in them romantically.
Them other girls just service, they do nuttin' for me girl
The singer is not interested in other girls, as they do not compare to the person they are addressing.
Ain't no need to be nervous, this'll workout surely girl
The singer assures the person that their relationship will be successful and they should not feel anxious or stressed about it.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: CHAD HUGO, PHARRELL WILLIAMS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind