Though it may seem like a strange choice on the surface, it felt natural for the musician Pharrell Williams to tell his life story through Legos. "My earliest memories were the Lego sets that my parents would get me when I was really, really, really young,” he says. “Whether you actually really build what the set is all about or you're just putting pieces together ... it's just magical."
As a kid, Pharrell lived in the Atlantis Apartments, a densely populated public housing complex in Virginia Beach, Va. Outsiders were afraid to go into his neighborhood, but for Pharrell, the place was special, teeming with talent and fun.
“There were a lot of athletes that were incredibly gifted, a lot of artists that were incredibly gifted,” he says. “You know, you talk about carbon? … That heat, that pressure, that time produced a lot of diamonds.”
The new animated film, Piece By Piece, uses Legos to trace Pharrell’s early life as a boy fueled by creativity and drawn to music. Directed by Academy Award-winner Morgan Neville, the unusual biopic charts Pharrell’s trajectory to becoming a Grammy-winning songwriter, performer and producer who's collaborated with artists like Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears and Beyoncé. Perhaps a story as colorful as his can only be told in such a flamboyant way.
Interview highlights
On his synesthesia, which causes him to see color when he hears music
If you take it back to when you were born, all of your nerve endings — sight, sound, smell, taste, feeling — they were all connected. And then when you turn 1, those nerve endings, they prune. And sometimes some of them stay connected. And the ones that stay connected give you synesthesia. And when they're connected, they send ghost images and ghost information to the different parts of the brain. And so you end up “hearing” a color or “seeing” a sound.
On writing “Milkshake,” sung by Kelis
The shapes [I see] are hard for me to explain, but it sort of zig zags. And those synth lines are yellow and brown for me. … And the yellow it goes from bright to mustard, marigold, and then there is just very stark brown. …
That song came from a trip that I went to in Brazil, and I just, like, lost my mind. I'd never seen so many beautiful women. They were just everywhere. And forgive the objectification, when I say that. But that was the impression that it made on my mind at that time, I don't know, 20 years ago. … I'd never seen anything like that. Where am I? And if you could put that energy and feeling if that could be sort of transmuted [into a song]… that was the attempt.
On writing a song for Prince that he rejected
He was different. He was one of those people that, like, he's a musical savant. There's not an instrument he couldn't pick up and play. He's a brilliant writer. Vocally, he's incredible. He was an incredible performer and he wrote and produced for so many people. … [He was] like, “Do you own or your masters? If you don't own your masters, we can't work together.” … I never heard anyone say that before. Then his other thing was he wanted to sort of talk about religion. And I was like, interesting. And now I do own all of my master recordings. And I'd be happy to square off in a conversation about the business of religion versus the necessity of faith.
On his falsetto singing voice
I had a problem with my voice for many, many, many years because I didn't feel like I had found my voice. I always thought that my tone sounded like Mickey Mouse. The next time you listen to “Frontin’,” picture Mickey Mouse — you can't unsee it.
On writing “Happy”
The song is a sarcastic answer ... for a rhetorical question: How do you make a song about someone so happy that nothing can bring them down? ... When Despicable Me 2 came out [the studio] couldn't get it to work [on the] radio because it was alien. It didn't sound like anything else. … [Radio] didn't play it until we did the video six months later, when the song was included on a DVD … and there was a budget to do a video for the song. Since we loved it as a companion piece to sell the DVD.
On why being in water helps him write music
When you're in the shower, you know, and the water’s just consistently running and it creates an effect of white noise. And that's the reason why you can think clearly when you shower. … Ideas come. Or sometimes people sing in the shower – that’s the reason why they do it is because that consistent noise, that white noise is particularly freeing to the part of your mind that wants to just iterate and not be environmentally distracted. So running water, being near water, being in water, a bath, a pool, seeing the ocean, standing in the shower, washing my hands in the sink. It does it for me.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Sheldon Pearce adapted it for the web.
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