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.
Provider
N*E*R*D Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I had on last night (damn)
I must have passed out (wake up)
And cash is just like the clothes I worn yesterday
We are broke (damn)
I gotta get my ass out (so)
I went to see what my friend was talking about (drugs)
He told me cocaine would get you clout (uh huh)
But I went to high school and got kicked out (yeah)
So I'm driving this truck down the 95 (woo)
I pray to God I make it home alive
I don't get pulled over by the man (damn)
I just want to make it home to hold your hand (uh)
Goodbye, beloved one
Do you know what I am?
If you don't see my face no more
I'm a provider girl, gotta face the streets tonight
Ohh, ohh
Goodbye, beloved one
Do you know what I am?
If you don't see my face no more
I'm a rider, girl gotta face the streets tonight
Ohh, ohh
You say you don't want me to go but I have to (I gotta go)
Please don't weep (ayy)
I love you (don't cry)
I refuse to be a bum (naw)
Especially coming where I'm from
I'm a provider girl
And I love you (hey, hey)
So it's just like I said before
Heading down 95
Dodging Johnny Law
I don't need a ticket though I never got one
If he pulls me over he can feel my shotgun
I think about life pull down my hat
It's just like this road I don't know where I'm at
I don't want to be another cocaine story
Will I find my sanity ?
Where I find my glory ?
Come on (huh?)
Goodbye, beloved one
Do you know what I am?
If you don't see my face no more
I'm a provider girl, gotta face the streets tonight (listen, baby)
Ohh, ohh
Goodbye, beloved one
Do you know what I am?
If you don't see my face no more
I'm a rider, girl gotta face the streets tonight
Ohh, ohh (ayy)
Someday, someday, this will be over (over)
We'll raise a family (family)
I'll get a job and I'll be a voter (voter)
But if I die (no, no, no)
It will change you (change you)
I watch over our family
But only as an angel (angel)
So don't tell me you don't know what you see
When you're looking at a motherfucker just like me
I'm a provider girl (I know you)(hey, listen)
I said don't tell me you don't know what you see
When you're looking at a motherfucker just like me
I'm a rider girl (yeah)(oh)
Goodbye, beloved one
Do you know what I am?
If you don't see my face no more
I'm a provider girl, gotta face the streets tonight (I gotta go)
Ohh, ohh
Goodbye, beloved one
Do you know what I am?
If you don't see my face no more
I'm a rider, girl gotta face the streets tonight (I love you baby, I'll be back)
Ohh, ohh (listen)(someday)
I love you girl
I'm doing this for us
I don't know any better
What am I supposed to do?
Nothing, I love you
The lyrics to N*E*R*D's song Provider are about the struggles of trying to make it in life, feeling broke, and being tempted by drugs. The song is told from the perspective of someone who is trying to provide for their loved ones and make a better life for themselves, but is faced with challenges and obstacles along the way. The lyrics describe the character waking up in the same clothes they wore the night before, feeling broke and desperate, and turning to drugs to try to gain some kind of clout or success.
Despite the warnings of their mother and the troubles they faced in high school, the character is determined to be a provider and not a bum. They are driving down the highway, hoping to make it home safely and hold their loved one's hand. The chorus repeats the phrase "Goodbye beloved one, do you know what I am?" as a way of acknowledging the sacrifices that are made in order to provide for those you love.
The song's overall message is one of hope, determination, and sacrifice. It tells the story of someone who is working hard to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones, even in the face of adversity.
Line by Line Meaning
Woke up I had the same clothes on I had on last night
I woke up realizing I passed out and still have the same clothes on from last night.
Damn
Expressing frustration or disappointment about the situation.
And cash is just like the clothes I worn yesterday
Money is in the same situation as my clothes from yesterday, meaning we have none left.
We are broke
We don't have any money and are struggling financially.
Damn
Frustration and disappointment about the financial struggle.
I gotta get my ass out
I need to take action and find a way to improve my financial situation.
I went to see what my friend was talking about
I went to see what my friend was saying about a possible solution to our financial problems.
Drugs
Possible solution to our financial problems through illegal means that might destroy our lives.
He told me cocaine would get you clout
My friend told me that cocaine could give us the status we desire.
My momma said he's trouble and schools my route
My mother warned me that my friend is a bad influence and education is the right path for me to take.
But I went to high school and got kicked out
Although I attended high school, I was expelled from school.
So I'm driving this truck down the 95
I'm currently driving my truck on the highway.
I pray to God I make it home alive
I fear that something might happen to me while driving and pray to reach home safely.
I don't get pulled over by the man
I hope to avoid getting stopped by the law enforcement officer.
I just want to make it home to hold your hand
I just want to reach home safely and be with my loved one.
Goodbye beloved one
Parting words to a loved one.
Do you know what I am
Questioning if the loved one understands his situation.
If you don't see my face no more
If he dies, she would not see him again.
I'm a provider girl, gotta face the streets tonight
He is a provider, but he has to take to the streets and face the struggles of life to provide for his loved one.
You say you don't want me to go but I have to
Although she doesn't want him to leave, he has no other option but to leave.
Please don't weep
Requesting her not to cry.
I love you
A declaration of love to the loved one.
I refuse to be a bum
He doesn't want to be a failure or beggar in life.
Especially coming where I'm from
His tough upbringing motivates him not to fail.
And I love you
His love for the loved one fuels his motivation to succeed.
So it's just like I said before
Reinforcing his earlier statements.
Heading down ninety five
Driving down the highway.
Dodging Johnny law
Trying to avoid getting caught by the law enforcement officer.
I don't need a ticket though I never got one
He doesn't want to get a ticket from a police officer.
If he pulls me over
If the police officer stops him.
He can feel my shotgun
He threatens the police officer with a shotgun if they get too aggressive.
I think about life pull down my hat
He thinks about his life struggles and pulls down his hat to hide his emotions from others.
It's just like this road I don't know where I'm at
He is in a state of confusion about his life and is uncertain about his future.
I don't want to be another cocaine story
He doesn't want his life to be ruined by drugs like others.
Will I find my sanity
He questions whether he will ever find peace of mind.
Where I find my glory
He wonders where his success and happiness lie.
Someday, someday, this will be over
He hopes to overcome his struggles someday.
We'll raise a family
He hopes to start a family with his loved one when they overcome their struggles.
I'll get a job and I'll be a voter
He hopes to get a job and vote, signifying a better and normal lifestyle.
And if I die
In case of his death.
It will change you
His death will affect his loved one emotionally and socially.
I watch over a family
He will watch over his loved ones after his death, like an angel.
But only as an angel
He can only watch over them as an angel after his death.
So don't tell me you don't know what you see
He challenges those who might judge him based on his appearance.
When you're looking at a motherfucker just like me
Referring to himself as a 'motherfucker' to imply he is not any different from others with a similar background.
I'm a provider girl
Reiterating that he is a provider for his loved one.
I said don't tell me you don't know what you see
Reiterating that he is sensitive to the way others perceive him.
I'm a rider girl
He is a fighter and survivor who will do whatever it takes to provide for his loved one.
I love you girl
A final declaration of love to the loved one.
I'm doing this for us
Doing everything he can to provide for them as a couple or family.
I don't know any better
He has limited knowledge and resources to make things better for them.
What am I supposed to do
He feels helpless and unsure about his future.
Nothing I love you
Despite everything, he still loves his partner.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Sentric Music, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Chad Hugo, Pharrell Williams
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
aMy O
This is so damn beautiful. Like I can’t describe it, it’s just liquid gold that you can only enjoy with your ears
Emphasize
Zero 7 = amazing music! N.E.R.D. = amazing music! Zero 7 + N.E.R.D. = Heaven sent blessing :)
killerwale44
N.E.R.D and these chill mixes defined my middle school life, man it has been a long time.
Kivon Rahim
Preach
IDontKnow733
This is one of those rear moments when the remix is better than the original.
Ms. Blaileen
No question...superior to the original. Has a lot more soul.
E D Daly
Rare...
Daz
hahahaha
Erich von Falkenhayn
This song was on a chill out compilation that I bought at a Best Buy back in ‘05 I think. This song comes into my head randomly through the years.. but I’ll always remember this song blasting in the car speakers driving around on a cool Saturday night. Man, the memories!
I hope you all live some dope ass, blessed lives. Cheers, friends.
Josh M
8 years later and this is still as good as the first time i heard it :)