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Pharrell Williams · S4 E2
Lord Willin'
The Clipse album that defined an era of street rap
August 20, 2002. Lord Willin' drops with every track produced by The Neptunes, and two brothers who spent five years without a record deal enter the top five of the Billboard 200.
Ma, I Don't Love Her (2002). The third single from Lord Willin'. Where Grindin' strips everything away, this track rolls: warm bass, a melodic Pharrell hook, and two brothers proving they are not a one-trick act.
Ma, I Don't Love Her -- Clipse (2002)
This track shows the other side of what The Neptunes can do for The Clipse. A warm, rolling bass line sits under a melodic Pharrell hook. The beat swings where Grindin' marches. The production has a summer-evening quality, as if The Neptunes wanted to prove the same team behind the harshest beat of 2002 could also make you want to drive with the windows down.
One Team, One Album
Most rap albums in 2002 use five or six different producers. Lord Willin' uses one team for every track. The Neptunes build an entire world for The Clipse: from the skeletal aggression of Grindin' to soulful bounce, from menacing synthesizers to jazz piano loops.
“We gave Pharrell and Chad the entire album because nobody else could make beats that matched what we were saying. They understood Virginia. They understood the life.”
— Pusha T, in interviews about Lord Willin' (paraphrased)
TAP TO REVEAL: Why is every single track on Lord Willin' produced by The Neptunes?
Virginia -- Clipse
A Lord Willin' deep cut named after the state that made all of this possible. Pusha T and Malice rap about home with the specificity of people who never left, over a Neptunes beat that sounds like a humid night on the Tidewater coast.
How many tracks on Lord Willin' were produced by someone other than The Neptunes?
The Neptunes have built the hardest rap album of the year. Now a phone call from Justin Timberlake is about to prove they can do the exact opposite: take a boy-band singer and turn him into the biggest male pop star on the planet.
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