How Pharrell Williams Fired Up the Clipse Reunion
Some peers I enjoy talking music with have told me P’s production isn’t hitting as hard as they’d hoped; I’ve seen people saying the same thing online. Respectfully, I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. “So Be It” sounds like a retro 2002 club banger in the best way. The beat change on Malice’s verse for “P.O.V.” almost made me stop short on the highway the first time I played it. That crescendoing choir on “By the Grace of God?” Cinema. “Mike Tyson”—up there with some of his all-time best work.
This album sounds great. The beats are big, but not in a poppy, this-guy-also-scores-Despicable-Me kind of way. They’re sparse, the better to let the Thornton brothers’ distinct way of twisting syllables shine through. They’re dynamic, with several beat-changes peppered across the project, but not an overindulgent amount. Most importantly, they sound nothing like anything else in rap right now, even in an era where the old Neptunes sound is so revered that a Gen Z rapper like Lil Tecca can type “Neptunes type beat” into YouTube and score one of the best songs of the year off the search.
They don’t even sound like other, recent Pharrell beats. Clipse have spoken often during this rollout about chasing specific feelings to restore. Well, it sure feels like 2006—when P, at the height of his musical powers and ubiquity, scored their titanic comeback album Hell Hath No Fury with some of the best work of his career, with a focus so singular that his contributions elsewhere felt rote by comparison (see: Jay-Z’s “Anything”).
Crucially, the feeling is the only thing the trio were chasing while creating the album: in an interview with The New York Times, Pusha joked that the concept of “nostalgia” is effectively banned in Pharrell’s workspace, and if you bring up any specific old song, he’ll immediately shut down.
“I think my thesis is that the algorithms have changed music—for good, bad, or indifferent,” Pharrell tells me, in response to Pusha’s comment. “The thing I take issue with is that the algorithmic trends are about things like songs being shorter or having 40 songs on an album. But what the algorithm doesn’t necessarily track is cultural heat, which cannot be quantified by streams. If you’re curious, then you’re gonna stream something, but that doesn’t mean that you actually like it and for me, making this music was about urgency and heat.”
Whenever Clipse speak about the two years of sessions in France with Pharrell that birthed this album, the concept of “urgency” always comes up. Pusha told me he’s insistent on working with Pharrell above any other producers that he may otherwise appreciate because there’s a shorthand for standard-raising that’s become almost telepathic between the trio. I’d kill to see actual footage of the BTS in making some of these songs; one detail that struck me in particular was Push and Malice revealing to the Joe Budden Podcast that P is cooking these beats for them a la carte. Gone are the days of plumbing beat folders for tracks that P might’ve originally made with Jay-Z or whoever else in mind.
