Pharrell listens to his own music a bit differently than the average person — especially his 2003 smash hit with Snoop Dogg, “Beautiful.”
Speaking to Kelefa Sanneh on CBS Sunday Morningto promote his Lego biopic Piece By Piece, the super-producer was elaborating on the “mixed feelings” that came with his early-aughts ubiquity as part of The Neptunes — particularly about his falsetto singing on the aforementioned Snoop track.
“I had a song called ‘Beautiful’ with Snoop, right?” Pharrell said to Sanneh. “Girls heard me singing that. I heard Mickey Mouse.”
“I swear to you, when you just get a moment and you just listen, you’ll never be able to unhear it again,” he continued. “But that’s what I hear.”
You can see the segment at around the five-minute mark below.
In other Pharrell news, Lupe Fiasco recently shared the history of the short-lived supergroup featuring the two of them and Kanye West, Child Rebel Soldier.
In an interview on Sway in the Morning on Friday (October 4), Lupe broke down what happened with the group’s 2007 debut single “Us Placers,” all the way up to his recent effort to take back the name this past summer.
When asked about CRS by Sway, Lupe made clear that he’s still on good terms with Ye and Pharrell, but said that “the fans feel betrayed” that the group didn’t put out any material beyond two singles and an appearance on N.E.R.D.’s “Everybody Nose” remix.
He jokingly lamented that “the two richest n-ggas in the group” were the reason it never continued. “P[‘]s eating caviar golden sandwiches, Ye is stitching up two different Rick Owens coats to wear in the shower. I’m trying to corral these two,” he laughed.
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That put Lupe in the frame of mind to tell the group’s whole history.
“There [was] a lot of fan momentum around it as a movement” following the release of “Us Placers,” he remembered. “We always talked about [the group, but] it kind of fell to the wayside… And then again, n-ggas get rich and crazy and shit goes left.”
But it turned out the crew’s small output of songs made an outsized impact on a new generation of creators.
“That whole time, it’s incubating with people like Tyler[, the Creator],” he said.
