Pharrell Williams: Miami Sound Machine

Super-paid beatmaker Pharrell Williams has created some of the most memorable hits in pop music. Now ready with his solo debut, In My Mind, the style icon wonders to Joan Morgan if he’s ready to expose his inner visions to the world.

There is an inherent transience to cities by the sea that makes them both sexy and susceptible to illusion. Not lies per se, or malicious deceptions, but a gentle massaging of the truth, the kind that facilitates the crap people want to believe about themselves—and obscures what they’d prefer others not know. This makes Hibiscus Island, Florida, with its heady infusion of private exclusivity and new money, the perfect background for a music video. Especially one whose treatment probably read a little something like this: Multi-millionaire playboy romances racially non-descript (but if you had to guess, Brazilian) beauty poolside at his mansion by the ocean. Joined later on his boat by his homeboy (Kanye West!) and two skinny-ass model chicks in barely-there bikinis. A Rolls Royce! Ferrari! Multiple designer wardrobe changes! Cut to: Sean “Diddy” Combs, special music fashion mogul friend! Lots and lots of bling! Boys, beats, boats and bitches meets Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous…this could quickly lapse into cliché. That is if the video in question wasn’t Pharrell’s “Number One.”

Clichés, you see, require precedent. The meteoric rise of Pharrell Williams’s career has none. The man has been leaving his indelible size nine sneaker print on the ass cheek of popular culture for more than a decade. As the more visible half of the ubiquitous Neptunes (the production team responsible for every other banger in your iPod—that is unless you don’t really mess with Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z, Janet Jackson, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake, Ludacris, Busta Rhymes or TLC), one-third of the critically-acclaimed rock band N.E.R.D. and CEO of Star Trak (musical home to Kelis, Clipse, Robin Thicke and Slim Thug), Williams’s eclectic kitchen sink approach to production has literally altered the musical landscape.

An unabashed fashionista, Williams’s emergence as a style icon has been equally impressive. Of the man who made skateboard gear sexy, MTV’s style guru Coltrane Curtis says this: “Pharrell is the yin and yang of fashion. He can give you something real grimy—gold teeth, tattoo on his neck—but he can also give you a white button-up that’s so crispy and so grown man. He’s fly.”

“Fashion for Pharrell is a lifestyle,” adds celebrity stylist June Ambrose. “Clothing for him is like second skin. It’s like the early days of hip-hop when artists didn’t need stylists. He knows how to translate fashion.”

And turn his passion for it into profit. Williams’s two luxe apparel lines, Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream (including tees, jeans, sneakers, hoodies, varsity jackets), can be found at high-end retailers like Barneys and Union with price points that range from $90 to $900. “No rapper, let alone a man of color,” continues Coltrane, “has been able to create a luxury product that can sell across the board. Rocawear, Marc Ecko Collections and Sean John Blue all caught bricks, but BBC sold over $100,000 in product at the Union store in Los Angeles in one day. A hoodie is $425—it’s a piece of shit hoodie,” he laughs. “Screen-printed all over. No detail. No embroidery. But the margins on them make you want to cry when you think of how much money Pharrell must be making.”

The coup d’etats continue. Later today Williams will take a break from our interview to sign a multi-million-dollar contract to be the first ever male (and black) face for French fashion house Louis Vuitton.