Pharrell
In My Mind

THE REVIEW

Pharrel is the most talked-about beatmaker of these times. He has worked with all and sundry, he is part of the most sought-after producer duo in recent years, the Neptunes, and with two friends, he has climbed various charts with the acronym No-one Ever Really Dies. Now, after various delays, his first true solo album is out: 'In My Mind'.

Maybe he's flashy, maybe he gets on your nerves, maybe he's too trendy, maybe you hate today's black music and in that case, stop here, don't go any further, and goodbye. Maybe all that… But damn, he's a beatmaker who rocks! There are few like him, and those few hide away with snobbish attitudes far from the spotlight, but not him. He makes almost anything he touches shine. And the album is a gem. A monument. It never lets up. It holds up for all sixty-four-plus minutes of its duration.

A compendium of hip-hop and r'n'b. To think that inside there are odious characters, real huge jerks. Yet the style is unmistakable: lascivious and suggestive tracks often adorned with scratches or distorted and piercing noises, almost annoying as if to punctuate everything with an avant-garde or experimental taste (listen to the single with Gwen Stefani and then come back to me, how is that prolonged, saturated, and distorted beat like Daft Punk…). And also the other single where our Skateboard P believes he's none other than good old Marvin, just punctuating the piece with sampled claps to remind us that we're in 2000 and not in the fantastic seventies…

Exemplary are That girl and Baby both with rather useless VIPs (respectively Snoop “dog face jerk” Dogg and the quintessential nuisance Nelly) but at the same time excellent: the first one is very sensual and the second one is trapped in a very respectable rhythmic mesh. Superlative instead are Young Girl with Jay-Z (okay, good, but too overrated) and Number One with the champion Kanye West.

In short, this In My Mind is not a negligible album, perhaps difficult to approach but immediately captivating. It is an album that will become essential over time, a classic that will rise above its actual value thanks to the fact that it will influence most of the future r’n’b.