mike d interviews the neptunes

[cwdoom]

does anybody have that interview. i remember it on the old GR site but can't find it. paste it on the board if you can....thanks!!

[cwdoom]

i found it here it is for anybody else.

Mike D Interviews The Neptunes

Must be something in the water in Virginia Beach. The seaside town and its suburbs host an embarrassment of riches when measured in hip-hop-and-R&B producers per capita, and especially when weighted by the infectiousness of their songs. Home to Teddy Riley and Timbaland (and Missy Elliott), VB has also donated Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo (together known as the Neptunes) to the world. The young producer duo are responsible for a successive string of hits that everyone and their jiggling, wiggling asses seem to be able to agree on: tracks like Mystikal's "Shake Ya Ass," Jay-Z's "Give it 2 Me," Noreaga's "Oh No" and of course, ODB's "Got Your Money." This summer, they step into the spotlight with their own album on Virgin, under the moniker N*E*R*D. They've referred to the album's sound as "guitarless rock," and they might be right. Whatever it is, it's not necessarily hip hop, it's not quite rock, and if it's R&B, it's the most progressive R&B in years.
Mike D, Tick, and Travis Buddyhead hooked up with Chad and Pharrell at the Record Plant in Hollywood to chat about their upcoming album, death, God, and ODB.
Pharell: So, the name of the album is "In Search Of," and there's different kinds of songs that have a feel from different eras. Like we have one called "Baby Doll" that's more like beach-'60s-Beatle-esque, then we had "Lap Dance" that had a more year 2000 feel. It's groundbreaking in my opinion because it's everything that a thug would say, probably, the things that run through their minds, but just not presented in that way. Like, we have a song called "Provider" that was written from the perspective of a guy that hustles, that feels like the only thing he has in life is to make those drug runs, but it's sung like country-western. And the music is like, sort of Johnny Cash-ish.
Chad: With beats behind it.
Mike D: And you played all the guitars on there? You guys don't sample, I heard.
Pharell: No, we program it.
Mike D: So you program it and you just call it a guitar sound.
Chad: We'll program it based on instruments.
Mike D: What's kind of interesting to me about the Neptune sound is… ok there's people who do interesting things on an underground level. But as musicians what we're all doing, ultimately, is we're trying to communicate to people. So it's almost more interesting to me when there's people like y'all who are making something that's kind of subversive but it's communicating with a lot of people. So how do you think about that in terms of putting it all musically…
Pharrell: Together? We don't.
Mike D: Like making a track and making it hot and "Is it gonna reach people? Are we being too out there? Is this too ill?"
Pharrell: No, no, can I tell you, right before we make something I always find us saying we gotta just push the limits and do what we can. Now that we have everyone's attention, let's just run with it. And if we fail, at least we know that we got our magic moment on stage - meaning, amongst the public's most focused attention, we did what we wanted to do at that moment. Now if we win, that's cool. That means we're like heroes. But at the end of the day man, it's just about going in there, and just coming out with whatever makes you go crazy.

Mike D: So many people when they look at where music is at now are like, "Oh hip-hop is stagnant." And actually, I don't necessarily agree. There is shit happening, but at the same time, it's hard cause we've never been in a time when so many records come out, period. It doesn't matter if it's hip-hop, R&B, alternative music, whatever. There's all these big, huge record companies putting out so many records.
Pharrell: 40 records a month…
Mike D: Exactly, I can't even fathom how many records Virgin and Columbia and Universal put out, let alone all the independents and stuff happening on a more underground level. But, like I said, the things that are breaking through to me, it just feels like now is the time. More than ever, DJs are combining different kinds of music. Like I hear you guys talk about At The Drive-In…
Pharrell: You know what it is, we grew up around that kind of shit. But people wouldn't know that because all they get to hear is "Shake Ya Ass" or something like that. We first met in 7th grade, in beginning band class.
Chad: We grew up in Virginia, in suburbia. In Virginia Beach.
Pharrell: We met in concert band.
Chad: Within that institution, kids would listen to everything, so we gathered around and played together as a band but then on our free time there were kids listening to rock, other kids bangin' on drums playing hip-hop. Different types of shit was around us.
Mike D: Around what time was that?
Chad: High School, 1990?
Pharrell: Was it '90? No, I lived in Salem Village and he went to Kemps Landing [Magnet School]. It was probably like '88, 'cause listen I was skating there.
Chad: Yeah, back in the day, we would sit down and do a hip-hop track and he'd jump on the skateboard and I'd jump on the freestyle bike and we'd just fuck around and then we'd go back to the house and start makin beats.
Mike D: When you first started making beats, what was your first equipment?
Chad: Our first equipment was like a Casio SK5. I moved up to a sequential keyboard and a cheap Alessis drum machine, and a two-track… I didn't even have a four-track, it was like two tape players.

[cwdoom]

Mike D: I read in this one interview online that you guys had a group with Timbaland?
Pharrell: Yeah. It was back when I was rhyming.
Mike D: So that was like a Native Tongues influenced group?
Pharrell: Please, man. Yeah, it was.
Mike D: Nah, I'm just curious. To me, it's wild how you can look at any scene and there's bands and musicians that come out of it, but at different times they knew each other or worked together before they blew up or went on to do other.. is that embarrassing? Cause believe me, we had a lot of embarrassing records.
Pharrell: No, no, we had some dope songs. Tim was making some hot beats. It was either be in that group and only be a rapper, or me and Chad remain a team and continue making beats and I could rap at the same time.
Mike D: How did you start the Neptune sound? Was that through Teddy Riley? Or you did stuff on your own, and then you hooked up with Teddy?
Pharrell: Yeah, exactly. We were just making beats for fun. Getting in talent shows just to get in them. And I don't know why. Still, to this day, I think to myself what made me think "Let's get in a talent show."
Mike D: So it was some real Star Seach type shit.
Pharrell: No, but we didn't know… Teddy wasn't supposed to be there. It was just a high school talent show. There were all kinds of bands there playing like U2 songs. I don't know what we were thinking man, we just wanted to show that we were talented I guess. We clearly were not thinking about getting on. We had heard Teddy was in town - we had a lot of people who would try to play like middleman to try to get us to him. And then every day was like an ongoing adventurous task to try to get him to see us. Every time we'd be pulling out, he'd be pulling into his studio. We'd knock on the door -- "Could you come back another time?" All that kind of crazy shit.
Mike D: So it was kind of like The Harder They Come. Have you seen that, the Jimmy Cliff movie?
Chad: Yeah yeah, we were just literally trying to get our foot in the door. Like literally. Like little trick or treaters and shit.
Pharrell: We were relentless. I did everything but put on a wig.
Mike D: A lot of MCs put on wigs now. Look at Andre from Outkast. MCs wear wigs.

The conversation shifts from Outkast to Wu-Tang...
Pharrell: Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin to Fuck Wit, I've seen a lot of people get punched in the face. In Virginia, you just had to hear (sings the beginning, and when the beat kicks in) POW. Somebody get punched in the face right there. When that shit comes on, is that not just pandemonium in the club? We haven't done that song yet that just provokes total pandemonium in the club. People might go off because they're ready to party and dance and shit but we haven't done that song where it's just like….
Chad: People start to get like that with [Noreaga's] "Superthug," but when the girl vocal comes up it sets them in a different direction.
Pharrell: True.
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Mike D: One of the first tracks, I think I probably heard from you guys was the "Oh No" with Noreaga. I guess that was kind of a little more like that.
Pharrell: It is, it had the energy. You know what it is though, Tommy Boy fucked that up.
Mike D: That was a hot song.
Pharrell: Definitely. We've got a group called Clipse that we have coming out, their album's called Lord Willin'. The beats that we did on their album, that's probably going to do what it is that we're expecting it to do. And Chad has an artist named Kenna over at Interscope that has a new album. So Kenna's Project and the N.E.R.D. Project, they're both… not testing the waters, but just trying to be big ripples in the ocean. We have to interrupt what's going on and you're right in a sense that music is stagnant. But its almost not, it's basically been this way all throughout time. It does get stuck.

[cwdoom]

Mike D: Right, I feel the same way. It's easy to say that it's stagnant; you can look at '89 and be like, there are so many incredible hip hop records that came out in '89 and every month there was some new, exciting thing. You could probably look at all different kinds of music. I could look at jazz and it'd be a couple of years and boom all this stuff manifesting. Or rock and roll, punk rock… You know what I mean, there's a little manifesting explosion of creativity.
That's what I thought it was interesting about what you just said about your album, even what you said about God Willing… I think like, this will be my tangent now. I don't know, maybe I'm being bold in my assumption but I listen to everything from Jimi Hendrix to John Coltrane to the Neptunes to Outkast to De La Soul to whatever. But the thing that it all has in common, ultimately, it all is the stuff that transcends. You can say this or that but it's a feeling thing. It's God willing. It's them ultimately playing the instruments, but in a way they're becoming the instrument for God in their own totally different ways.
Pharrell: You're absolutely right. That's not a bold statement at all. It's actually intelligent and it's a rare opinion because a lot of people say I'm this and that and I make beats and I do this and I'm the shit. They don't understand that God is using you and God uses all kinds of people in mysterious ways. This is God's movie and you have to play your part and the minute that you deter from playing your part, you kind of get thrown off the set, you get cut.
Mike D: But also, we're all at these individual movies coming out. And for a drama to work you can't just have happy things happen for the entire movie. Bad things have to happen, illness, death, disease. That's a necessary part of the drama. It's not fun and doesn't feel good. It's all in there -- America to me is crazy to me about that with death. We want to remain in denial. We're all living and we're all dying but we're all happy to say, you know, "how you living?" Nobody is saying "How you dying?" (laughs)

Pharrell: Definitely. That's basically the philosophy in our name. "No one Ever Really Dies." [N.E.R.D.] If you die you transform, you take other forms. Even Einstein said it before: energy doesn't die, it just transforms. So we look at it like that's scientific proof that your soul goes somewhere. Whether it disperses or stays a unit and goes back to The Father, whatever you believe, it's doing something. It's not just disappearing from the face of existence period.
And then to address what you were saying earlier, I think that, you can also hear this in our music too, you cannot truly appreciate the sun unless you step in the rain for a while. Everything can't be happy but that's what makes life this mathematical brilliance of existence because appreciation is definitely acquired, its not something that you're born with and that you live and breathe everyday because if you did you would lose the desire to appreciate anything.
Its just like, man this shit twists on and on and on and all that we do everyday when we make music is try and further express it and veer off in all kind of directions to just address different issues. Even shit that I don't fuck around with or get down with… like I don't hustle. But I understand that it goes on. I don't condone it, its not nothing that I glorify but at the same time this is a very… The audiences are like brats, they are very pampered because when I was coming up it wasn't really about videos and shit like that.
Mike D: Not at all. It was about going in a record store and you saw that 12-inch on the wall.
Pharrell: And that was it. Now you have a video and that person's in a movie. It's everywhere, saturated. So what we have to do -- not to fight it and not even to counteract it either -- we have to promote emotional awareness. We have to do things like "Lap Dance," we have to show them titties and ass and shit like that… so you'll get their attention. But meanwhile, they're singing the song subconsciously while they're doing the dishes or mopping the floor or the guy's cutting his father's grass... he is mouthing back my lyrics of how the government is kind of fucked up and you need to just take a new look at it.
That's what we get a kick out of. It's like a weed brownie… you eat it and its no big deal. It's sweet and attractive. But you eat it and then an hour later that shit kicks in and you see a whole different side.
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Mike D: On that N.E.R.D. record, I read how you were talking about it being guitarless rock and that just kind of lit me up a little bit. Because to me that's one of the problems we have -- rock is one thing and hip hop has to be its other thing. Everything has its different format and its different tools. That's what I think is kind of wild.
When we grew up we would go into a music store and they never had DJ equipment sections. Now you go into a Guitar Center and they sell guitars and have Technics 1200 and mixers and PA's and samplers and Akai MPCs all this stuff and they never had that before. So it's all becoming one, yet it seems to me that we're still so slow in accepting that. We've still got: BET is over there and MTV is here, and KROQ is over here and Power [106] is over there.
Pharrell: Definitely... Radio One format is dope, over in London.
Mike D: For all the stuff that's out there right now, for me personally, I can't listen to KROQ and say that speaks for me. Power 106 yea there's songs I like on there but that doesn't speak for me because that's only one little itty bit part of what I am and what I'm into. You know what I'm saying? Its weird. I think there's so many people out there that think that same way and just feel like there's nothing really speaking for me.
Pharrell: In general there will be a minute and it's coming soon and there will be a shakedown and the real will be around. Like that group Clipse will be around, N.E.R.D will be around. We are introducing people to a real lifestyle. The shit that you feel like is not being currently articulated, that is what N.E.R.D. is presenting to people. It's ok to be smart and not necessarily be so cool and you can dig out your nose because I dig out my nose all the time and I don't care who the fuck is sitting there because it's my nose.
Tick: Well, speaking of someone who doesn't give a fuck. How'd you guys hook up with O.D.B.?
Mike D: [Got Your Money] was the jam when it came out. I love the song…
Chad: O.D.B. was crazy.
Mike D: He only had a crazy little amount of time to do his vocals because of legal constraints, right?
Pharrell:Yeah, he works in a bizarre fashion.
Mike D: So he just came down and did vocals with you, or you sent him the track?
Pharrell:No, we were right there. He is quite an artist.
Chad: He would go in there and do like two lines and then wig out, take a dinner break. Go back in there, scream some more. And sometimes, his lines didn't even make sense, but the way he said it, the playful way that he said it… it was just him.
Mike D: So he didn't have it written down?
Chad: Both, I think. Like one time, he stopped and screamed at the soundman so he could get in the booth and run up there and scream something off the top of his head. He came in there and did that shit real quick and went back and sat down to take a break.

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Pharrell: What else you want to talk about? Lets change the world yo. Lets change the world. Lets spread love. Lets not be ….
Mike D: How is that gonna happen? How can we all collectively…?
Pharrell: I'm doing it. I'm doing it.
Mike D: See that's my thing. To me, everyone has different views on it. Some people are like, 'I'm gonna do my pure thing and I don't care if it reaches people.' I feel like I want to try and do something positive it may as well reach a lot of people because how are we going to change shit? It's going to be a lot harder if we're reaching small amounts.
Pharrell: Well you gotta do it in music. I'm telling you right now, music speaks to people, number one, no matter what language they speak. And number two music, subliminally and subconsciously touches people in ways that they don't even fucking know. It opens your mind. Now if you ever listen to anything Timothy Leary says about how LSD opens your mind. I think music is a natural hallucinogen, if you allow yourself to be taken away by music. It will open your mind, it will change your perspectives.
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Mike D: But anyway back to changing what's fucked up or taking action, in the '70s you had Marvin Gaye making records speaking on things. You could listen to "What's Going On?" and just cry because what he's sayin is so true, but partly because how he's saying it and how he's singing it. Do we have that now? I hate to say that, because I always hate on people who are like, 'music today isn't as good as it was then.' You know cause there's shit on the radio that I love now.
Pharrell: But people don't key in on things like that. Like I was sayin I was raised on Donny and Marvin and Michael and Stevie and you're absolutely right. It's not only the sounds and the melodies and the words, it's also the meaning. That's how we try to make music, it's always laced in every way. Every feeling, every aspect, every sense of it feels good. That's how you know you're going to move a person. But be on the lookout for this B-side that we got going out in Europe and its called "Save the Babies" and its gonna be featuring this girl who's like a big fucking pop star, she's a black urban pop star. The hook is "save the world / save the babies / drop the debt / how hard is that?" It's gonna be crazy.
That is honestly all I wanna do. I have songs on the charts, I'm so thankful, so appreciative, and I'm content but I'm not happy. Because at the end of the day, knowing that you can stand on a block, be at a stoplight and see a bum leaning his head against the side of the stoplight and see a Bentley waiting for the stop light, there's something completely wrong with that picture. You've got politicians who act like they're fighting for this and they're fighting for that, but I bet you that politician won't go on that block where bums frequent. You know why? Because he'll have to do something about it. He knows that reporters will fuckin follow up on it and show you his flaws. It's all a fucking game -- even though I do like Clinton. I don't give a fuck about what nobody say about him. He's a human. He got head but he's a human.
Mike D: No but those flaws are an essential part of how we're all playing a role essentially. The problem is we get caught up in the illusion that we're controlling that role. We need to be controlling our actions because we need to purify and try to make those actions as positive as we can. We get caught up in thinking we control that, instead of just like trying to offer up all those intentions and fixing those things. Then we become all judgmental towards everybody else. I do it too. I get caught up in judging oh this persons wack, this persons doing bullshit or whatever. But whatever, we'll make a record, we'll change the world.
Pharrell: No we are. We've got a B-side called "Save the Babies."

[Top 10]

Yo guys! quit smoking ...

[cwdoom]

Yo guys! quit smoking ...

what does that have to do with the interview?

[Chicka B]

Hey thanks, that was very interesting. When was this interview?

[Friis gal]

16/June/2001 :: The Neptunes: Larger in Mass Than Uranus
Mike D interviews the Neptunes at Grandroyal.com

[FearandLoathing]

Holy shit, is Mike D a theist?

God damn, that sucks, if he is. You gotta be kidding me.

Instrument of god? What the fuck is he talking about? And then he goes on about some crazy shit about death just being part of the drama. Oh, yeah, it's part of the drama. If everything's just part of the damn drama why complain about your government, racism, sexism and homophobia? It's all just part of the drama, right?

That really throws me off. I wish I hadn't read the interview. And now I don't even wanna go buy Can I have it Like That? by Pharrell Williams, 'cause he's a dumbass too. Shit.

[cwdoom]

Holy shit, is Mike D a theist?

God damn, that sucks, if he is. You gotta be kidding me.

Instrument of god? What the fuck is he talking about? And then he goes on about some crazy shit about death just being part of the drama. Oh, yeah, it's part of the drama. If everything's just part of the damn drama why complain about your government, racism, sexism and homophobia? It's all just part of the drama, right?

That really throws me off. I wish I hadn't read the interview. And now I don't even wanna go buy Can I have it Like That? by Pharrell Williams, 'cause he's a dumbass too. Shit.


you might want to re-read that. mike isn't talking about none of that.

[cwdoom]

also just for the record. when they are commenting on god via music, it shows that they are spiritual people. the beastie boys are not these yuppy, middle america type cats. they love people, sprituality, and love for all things. you need to look at that interview from that vantage point.

[FearandLoathing]

you might want to re-read that. mike isn't talking about none of that.

I probably should, considering I skimmed it. But it's so long. I'll just take your word for it and buy the Williams single regardless.