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.
rockstar
N*E*R*D Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
yo yo yeah(4x)
uh
yeah
Fuckin' posers
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
yeah
its almost over now
almost over now
You think the way you lives okay
You think posing
Will save the day
You think we don't see
That you're running
Better call your boys
'Cause I'm coming
[Chorus]
You can't be me
I'm a Rock Star
I'm rhyming on the top of a cop car
I'm a rebel and my .44 pops far
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
guess
You ain't heard that we swallow guys
It's too damn late to apologize
Will you see the mantle or will you see the skies
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
You think that you don't have to ever quit
You think that you can get away with it
You think the light won't be ever lit
It's almost over now
Almost over now
Something's on your chest
Better get it off
There'll be no one left when we set it off
We ain't gonna take it no more
Since
It's almost over now
Almost over now
You had plenty of time
There was no rush
But it was your dream to be like us
You're in dreamland so you don't care
And as you wait(im standing there,im standing there mother fucker)
we're standing there
You can't be me
I'm a Rock Star
I'm rhyming on the top of a cop car
I'm a rebel and my .44 pops far
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
i guess
You ain't heard that we swallow guys
It's too damn late to apologize
Will you see the mantle or will you see the skies
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
You think that you don't have to ever quit
You think that you can get away with it
You think the light won't be ever lit
It's almost over now
Almost over now
Something's on your chest
Better get it off
There'll be no one left when we set it off
We ain't gonna take it no more
Since
It's almost over now
Almost over now
You don't succeed cause you hesitate
You think we're fly
But we levitate
Just be yourself
Don't ask us why
'Cause if you don't we'll make you fly
You can't be me
I'm a Rock Star
I'm rhyming on the top of a cop car
I'm a rebel and my .44 pops far
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
i guess
You ain't heard that we swallow guys
It's too damn late to apologize
Will you see the mantle or will you see the skies
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
You think that you don't have to ever quit
You think that you can get away with it
You think the light won't be ever lit
It's almost over now
Almost over now
Something's on your chest
Better get it off
There'll be no one left when we set it off
We ain't gonna take it no more
Since
It's almost over now
Almost over now
You can't be me
I'm a Rock Star
I'm rhyming on the top of a cop car
I'm a rebel and my .44 pops far
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
i guess
You ain't heard that we swallow guys
It's too damn late to apologize
Will you see the mantle or will you see the skies
It's almost over now
It's almost over now
You think that you don't have to ever quit
You think that you can get away with it
You think the light won't be ever lit
It's almost over now
Almost over now
Something's on your chest
Better get it off
There'll be no one left when we set it off
We ain't gonna take it no more
Since
It's almost over now
its Almost over now
no on ever really dies
you believe that?
well,if not,for you,
its almost over now
almost over now
no on ever really dies
brought to you by Star Trak
coming to a theatre near you
The hottest songs from N.E.R.D.
The lyrics to N*E*R*D's "Rockstar" are a scathing indictment of posers who think they can mimic the lifestyle of a rock star without actually having the talent or drive to become one. The song suggests that these people are running from something and that they hide behind their image, thinking that they are fooling everyone around them. The repetition of the phrase "It's almost over now" suggests that their time is running out and that the real rock stars are going to take over. The chorus is a declaration that the lead singer of the band, Pharrell Williams, is a true rock star, rhyming on top of a cop car with a .44 that pops far.
The verses are filled with warnings to the posers, who think they are getting away with something by not taking their chances in life. The lines "Something's on your chest, better get it off / There'll be no one left when we set it off" is a warning to the posers that their time is running out and that they better get their act together. The song also criticizes the way society has come to idolize rock stars, and how people think they can't succeed unless they mimic their idols.
Overall, "Rockstar" is a powerful song about what it takes to truly be a rockstar and the dangers of trying to imitate one without the talent, passion, and drive to back it up.
Line by Line Meaning
Fuckin' posers
Addressing those who are insincere and fake.
It's almost over now
The song is concluding and the message is sinking in.
You think the way you lives okay
You think your lifestyle is acceptable.
You think posing
Will save the day
You believe that being a counterfeit will benefit you.
You think we don't see
That you're running
You wrongly believe that nobody notices your deception.
Better call your boys
'Cause I'm coming
You should seek help because you'll face consequences for your actions.
You can't be me
I'm a Rock Star
I'm rhyming on the top of a cop car
I'm a rebel and my .44 pops far
You can never match my lifestyle because I'm living as a rockstar who does things my way.
Guess
You ain't heard that we swallow guys
It's too damn late to apologize
Will you see the mantle or will you see the skies
You're in trouble now because I'm sending a warning.
You think that you don't have to ever quit
You think that you can get away with it
You think the light won't be ever lit
You lack the foresight to see that your behavior won't go unpunished.
Something's on your chest
Better get it off
There'll be no one left when we set it off
We ain't gonna take it no more
Since
There's something troubling you that you need to face or else, there'll be consequences.
You had plenty of time
There was no rush
But it was your dream to be like us
You're in dreamland so you don't care
And as you wait(im standing there,im standing there mother fucker)
we're standing there
You had a chance to correct your fakeness, but you didn't care, and now the real ones have arrived to show you up.
You don't succeed cause you hesitate
You think we're fly
But we levitate
Just be yourself
Don't ask us why
'Cause if you don't we'll make you fly
You're hesitant to be true to yourself, but you need to do so quickly or else we'll push you to embrace your real self.
No one ever really dies
You believe that?
Well, if not, for you, its almost over now
Almost over now
Contrary to your belief, your actions have consequences, and it's time to face them.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: CHAD HUGO, PHARRELL WILLIAMS, PHARRELL L WILLIAMS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind