Recombinators

“She Wants To Move,” where N.E.R.D. take their expert instrumental attack to the moon, is as impressive. The whole track rises up from a brutal restyled South American drum pattern that never backs off; every chord, every vocal, every percussive accent, every rangy guitar solo falls directly on the rhythmic foundation. As with the efflorescent “Maybe” and the strange and lovely “Wonderful Place,” N.E.R.D. carve out places to do occasionally eccentric countervailing hip-hop vocal stunts and Beatlesque harmonics, but these are just mini-breathers; “She Wants To Move” is a rocker, reinvented N.E.R.D.-style. In general, the highly unusual ensemble coherency allows all of N.E.R.D.’s recombinations to seem unborrowed.

Of course, restaging styles has long been a Williams signature. “I would always switch that up,” he says. “When they called us hip-hop, I went and did a record with Gwen [Stefani, of No Doubt] and those guys. Even before then, I said that we were on our way to the pop world, and I worked with Britney [Spears] and did the Justin [Timberlake] stuff. And the Justin record was to do the reverse. It was, yeah, I know he’s pop, but I think that this kid has, like, an R&B credibility that’s just undeniable, just give me a second and I’ll show you exactly what I mean. And, you know, people were patient. I think he’s got a good album.”

Asked if negotiating different styles can be dizzying, Williams answers with a long Virginian “Naaahhh.” They’re just different planes of expression, he says. “I liken that to how you are to your girlfriend, but at the same time to your mother and father, and at the same time to your boss. You’re the same guy, but the character that you represent to your girl or your wife is one guy, but at the same time still at the heart and core of the same person you are. These are different sides of your main character. Each of the different sides has a range of conversation that you have. It’s an unlimited vocabulary, but context pretty much narrows things down. That’s what it’s like being a beatmaker, a guy who sings and makes music in N.E.R.D., and a guy who wants to be the young Marco Polo of the world.”

Williams falls to talking, softly, about his sneaker line. It’s called Ice Cream, he says. “When people look at my sneakers, you would never figure that I’d made a beat in my life. If you listen to N.E.R.D., you aren’t going to think, ‘Oh, those are the Neptunes.’ And if you do, it’s only because you know me from doing all kinds of shit. That’s the only reason why, because you know I do all kinds of things. But if you didn’t know, and you went, ‘That’s the guy who did Nelly’s ‘Hot in Herre’ to someone, he’d go, ‘Bullshit.’ And that’s the beauty.”