Even among pop stars, a demographic made up entirely of magical thinkers, Pharrell Williams' all-encompassing belief in himself is remarkable. It's hard to imagine that he's ever had what he considered to be a bad idea. On the one hand, this sublime self-confidence is sort of awe-inspiring, and exactly the sort of attitude we demand from our pop stars. On the other hand, Pharrell has had an awful lot of wretched ideas.
Ever since 2001, his rock-band side project N.E.R.D. has been a reliable repository for all of the worst ones. Back when he and Chad Hugo were still dominating hip-hop radio, N.E.R.D. albums served a useful purpose: they brought the super-producers, endearingly, to earth. For every indestructible "What Happened to That Boy" or "Superthug", there was an "Everyone Nose" or a "She Wants to Move"-- something goofy and dubiously conceived where their reach wildly exceeded their grasp. N.E.R.D. albums may never have made for essential listening, but they spoke to an important part of the Neptunes storyline, fleshing out Hugo and Williams' image as likable, overly enthusiastic dorks.
So the fact that Nothing, their fourth album, is a parade of deliriously bad ideas-- terrible ones realized with fervent conviction, half-promising ones botched by disastrous execution-- shouldn't even really be held against it. That's sort of a N.E.R.D. album's reason for existing. The reason that listening to Nothing is so profoundly depressing, however, is because the first half of the above equation-- the part where the Neptunes are still cranking out lethal, indelible radio hits-- has more or less evaporated. Without that crucial ballast, both sides of the Neptunes story swing irretrievably into orbit. The worst moments on Nothing-- "Life as a Fish", for instance, which recycles the chord changes to In Search of...'s "Bobby James" and uses them to soundtrack Pharrell's preposterously dramatic retelling of God creating Earth; or the Jethro Tull smooth-jazz beat switchup of "I've Seen the Light / (Interlude) Inside of Clouds"-- are the sounds of an artistic compass spinning wildly.
True to form, Pharrell never sounds in the least discouraged steering his way through this wreckage. Whether he's assaying a timid version of Jim Morrison on "Help Me" or pillow-talk whispering his way through the mortifyingly stupid, Daft Punk-produced "Hypnotize U", he remains utterly convinced of his capabilities as a frontman. The songs that do work-- the double-time clavinet-and-bongos funk workout of "Party People", or the tense, minimal thump of the Deluxe Edition's "Sacred Temple" and "Nothing on You"-- hark back to what Neptunes tracks sounded like in 2004, when Pharrell and Chad still had a firm grasp on the rewards of tension and empty space. There isn't a lot left on Nothing, apart from these faint reminders, to indicate that these two guys were the same pair who once revolutionized the sound of hip-hop.
