Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Pharrell Williams · S2 E4
The Neptunes Sound
How two kids invented a new sonic language
Master Sound Studio, Virginia Beach, 1998. Pharrell plays a drum pattern into a Korg 01/W without quantizing it. The beat swings like a human but sounds like a machine.
Kelis, Caught Out There (1999). The first single from Kaleidoscope, entirely produced by The Neptunes. Thumping bass, wheezing synths, and a woman screaming "I hate you so much right now" over minimalist staccato beats.
The Opposite
Late-nineties hip-hop is dense. Bad Boy layers orchestral samples, Wu-Tang piles grimy textures on top of each other. Pharrell decides to do the exact opposite: strip everything back and use four sounds where others use forty.
“I was really into a minimalism thing. The least amount of sounds we could use, the better. Everything was so heavy at the time, so I was like, I'm gonna completely do the opposite.”
— Pharrell Williams
TAP TO REVEAL: What is Pharrell's secret weapon for choosing melodies?
Master Sound Studio, Virginia Beach
The Neptunes' home studio with engineer Andrew Coleman. The room where Pharrell and Chad built their sound on a Korg keyboard and an Ensoniq sampler.
The Neptunes Sound: The Specs
Get Along with You. Kelis
The second single from Kaleidoscope (1999). A softer, moodier side of The Neptunes' production: bubbling synths, a languid groove, and Kelis's voice floating over minimal instrumentation. Proof that the same producers who built "Caught Out There" could replace the rage with intimacy.
What was The Neptunes' primary sequencer, the keyboard at the centre of almost every beat they made?
They have the gear, the philosophy, and a debut album that proves the sound works. But one song is about to change everything, a track so alien that radio programmers don't know what to do with it. Next: Superthug.
0 XP earned this session