Pharrell Williams

0:03Tetragramatine.

0:10Tetragramatine.

0:23My... Agent at the time was just very persistent about me doing a documentary because, you know, somewhere between like six and seven years ago, there was like this whole rage of like, a -listers, musicians, specifically. They were just doing these documentaries all over the place. And the doc space just got like, like, it just turned hot. It's like, oh man, you got to do one on your life. And I was like, my life, no way. One, why would I want to listen to myself, speak for an hour and feel that feeling of listening to a voicemail for an hour? Why would I do that? Like, also, like, I see myself in the mirror every day and I am not curious or enthusiastic about about any of my story because I know it.

1:25I know what I did two minutes ago, two hours ago, two days ago, two weeks ago, two months ago, two years ago, two decades ago. What am I curious about? I wasn't. And that's a huge issue for me because anything that I do artistically, I need to be curious and I need to feel enthusiastic about what the journey of exploration and excavation is going to be. And I just did see that. I just didn't think it would be interesting. What he kept pushing and he kept persisting and kept insisting. And then finally, I was like, man, you really got to stop asking me about this. And he was like, look, you can do it anywhere you want.

2:13And at that point, it kind of like unlocked something. It unlocked a different way or vantage point of looking at the opportunity. So my brother, Zain Lowe was like, actually, you know, that's when you realized he just summed it up so well. And I was like, man, what do you mean? But he was like, you know, that's when you realize that it was an opportunity that was less about like the reflection of the past, but an opportunity to be creative. And that's literally what I felt. And I just thought, okay, well, if I can do it any way I want, I want to work with Morgan Neville, which we had discussed.

2:53You know, he's a really brilliant documentarian. You look at 20 and a performer's life, you know, especially superstars or the background singers. And to recognize that so well, that really interesting vantage point, enough to even name the film 20 feet from start. I was like, that guy is genius. And he does it again with Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers, the Fred Rogers doc. So I'm like, oh, I give that guy complete autonomy to my story. And autonomy to my catalog to use as he sees fit. But I want to do it in Lego. How did the Lego idea come? I knew that it was, it'd never been done before. And if Lego said yes, it was going to be crazy.

3:49All the stuff that we get to put in Lego. What was your connection to Lego? As a child, my earliest fondest memories of like toys were Lego sets. That's what my parents used to get us when we lived on a federal subsidy, you know, in public housing. Got us Lego sets. And I never dreamt that it would turn into this. But at the time, it was like, I was grateful for that. And this is way before there were any many figs or anything. They were just bricks and pieces. And then also like, right when we decided we were going to do it, the other thing that made it click for me is that like we had just had, you know, we have four children.

4:36We have our 16 year old rocket who he was here the last time. He's 16 now. And then we have three seven year olds who we had just had. So three. Yeah. At once. Yeah, three at once. Wow. And they have had Lego sets, you know, at different points in their lives. So we always get them. It's very generational. And I hadn't thought about all the implications, but I just knew that my story, if it got objectified, that I might like it. Yeah. Enough to do it. What I didn't realize is that it objectified it so much that I was able to look at it and appreciate it beyond what I was seeing in the mirror. When you look in the mirror, most of the time, even when you're very grateful for your life and your existence, and even in your physical form, right?

5:32Because not everybody has that. Not everybody is happy what they were born with. And we have to respect that too. But when you are, it's a, it's a thing I don't take for granted. But even when you're grateful for it, you know, you still see your fears, you see your flaws, you see your insecurities, you see the guilt and pressure that you feel from people guilt bullying you into doing things you don't really want to do, you know, like something your boss may suggest, you really don't want to do, but you say yes to anyway, you give into that guilt bullying or family or significant other or community or even voting party.

6:25I mean, there's always these pressures that things that you really, you know, yeah, obligation that you really don't want to deal with. But it's on you. And the pressures that come from that, but this allowed me to see beyond all those layers of distraction. And then significance. To see my true soul's purpose. And that is to be liberated, discover the tools of liberation and share them. What is many spirits as I can? Yeah. I mean, when you have that you use the word objectification because typically we think of objectification as a negative in our society, but you're describing it as a way to distance yourself and actually see what it is.

7:17Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, that's what happens when you get legal fire. You know, there's an objectification too. To you, and also to your story. And it makes it very relatable because when you see, when you see a land of apartments in there, like, it doesn't look as heavy as it would have if it was a real live action documentary. Yeah. That's the power of legal. Yeah. It allows other people to see things that their prejudices would not allow them to really take in just because, oh, that's the projects. It's a more poetic interpretation. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And open to you can see what you want to see in Lego.

8:02Yeah. So did you film the scenes live action then make them in Lego? Technically, how is it made? Well, what I had said the morning when we first worked together, when I first pitched it to him, to see if he would do it, I was like, yeah, I want you to shoot this documentary whatever way you want because I love and respect what it is that you've done thus far. I think you're the best at this and you're the perfect person for this. But I want you to shoot it. And then I want you to throw all the footage away but keep the auto. And then I want you to do it and I want us to do it in Lego. And he goes, yeah, check.

8:40And it was just that fast. And then he said yes. Yeah. Then we went to Lego. Yeah. And they said yes. Great. And then we went to focus and they said yes. And then they went to like Donna Langley over at Universal and she said yes. And so when you think about it, like this film is like the sum of a lot of yeses. Yeah. And when you add them up, you get what impossible looks like. Yeah. It's something known as ever seen before. Yeah. Especially because I'm black. I come from a marginalized community. You walk in in there saying, you know, hey, we're going to show the projects and we're going to make it so that everyone around the world will be able to understand it.

9:23They wouldn't get it. Yeah. But when you just say, hey, I just want to tell my life story through the guys of Lego because I want it to be relatable to people. Then all the other details get filled in. And as you're working on it, you realize all these are the things that you can like put in there later if you need to make it even more rich, even more details about the life and even more details about like these environments and you know, it just turned out more getting really crushed it, you know. How did you guys get Carl Sagan to be in it? You know, I don't know. I mean, we got permission from the family, but I was just so when he ended up in it because I'm such a Carl Sagan fan.

10:10You know, why is there big sense? Yeah, he's everything.

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11:52Is there really a statue of Neptune in Virginia Beach? Yeah, really. 100 % beautiful. Yeah. And how important was the beach growing up for you? The beach, for me, you know, even though we lived like maybe 10 -minute walk from the beach, black folks didn't really go to the beach and swim like that. That wasn't like the thing to do. It wasn't that it was illegal, although Virginia Beach 10 years before I was born, blacks were not necessarily welcomed. Blacks would swim in another city in Norfolk and an area called Ocean View, but Virginia Beach was pretty much like whites only. But when you were growing up, what was the vibe?

12:42I think there was residue of that energy. We were welcome to do it. It was open for us to do it, but I don't know if we were necessarily welcomed. You know, even when I did my festival down there, there were like signs that said that if you cursed, you could get locked up. But then we know who was getting locked up whenever they were like cursing out loud down in the ocean front. You know, or like you could get a ticket or a citation if the top of your underwear oboxas were showing above your shorts or pants. Yeah, we had a lot of that. But the city wanted to do something different. And so when we did our festival, I think it changed a lot of energy down there because we couldn't do it alone.

13:29And the 30 ,000 students that weren't necessarily as welcomed before, they couldn't do it alone. It took everybody coming together and seeing the bigger picture. And I think Virginia Beech has gotten a lot better. It's still got a lot of work to do. Tell me about the festival. Well, that was just it. It was, you know, 30 ,000 students that would come there every year on week 17 to blow off some steam right before exams. And they weren't particularly welcomed. And that's when like the whole Greek fest thing happened. And the riots and, you know, national guard. And it was it was a very tough time.

14:10And a lot of that residual energy was still laying around. And so they weren't necessarily being as supportive and as welcoming as they should have been to those students. So the chief of police chiefs of error at the time he asked me, if I had any ideas and we came up with something in the water. And that's that's what a festival came from. And I know we digressed a little bit. But that was like, it's I've always just given them back to Virginia Beach and giving back to the state of Virginia because that's what made me good, bad, or indifferent. And what ways do you feel like Virginia Beach made you?

14:44There wasn't a blossoming music industry there. You were outside of it. Yeah, we all were. Myself, Chad, Timberland, Missy, Shay. It wasn't really anything there. But when Teddy moved in town, Teddy Riley moved in town. A lot of that change and that gave us opportunities. And Tim and Missy went to Jersey and they were working a lot with the Devante swing. Like things happened then, but even still it wasn't that. But Virginia happened to be this really peculiar state that was in between New York DC and Atlanta and Miami. And it was like people would just go there. All the hustlers would come down.

15:36You know, and if they weren't necessarily hustling in the city, they were partying in the city. And Norfolk, Anvaging, and Beach. And it was just like this different time. You think the beach played a role in that? It was just like a thing. But musically, because we weren't as northern and we weren't the most southern, and we definitely weren't the Midwest or the West Coast. We listened to everything. And I think that shaped us as at least the group that I'm referring to now. Like it shaped us as musicians. And I think it really shaped the area because we loved anything that just was coming from any different area, but like amazing.

16:18Then it got playing and it got spending. I think that developed our taste buds to be eclectic to all kinds of music. It's a very interesting place that seems like it's just normalville, but there's so many other like hidden talents, people with great taste, it wasn't reflective in what you seem, but like, like for example, one of the biggest war hall collectors ever lived in Virginia Beach. People would know. We used to have this Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome down there that everybody performed that. I didn't even know, but like some of everybody performed there. And it sadly got torn down.

17:07But then we ended up acquiring that property to build like this whole big multi -use venue and hotel, wave park, all the stuff. But it's like, it's always been a magnet for very interesting people. The Edgar KC and the ARE foundation is down there. I didn't know that. Oh yeah, that's where he moved from Kentucky. He moved there. He moved to Virginia Beach. So cool. Yeah, no, it's a lot there. It's just, I don't think that we've been very good at marketing it and celebrating it. But maybe that keeps it what it is. Sometimes the harder it is to get to where the fact that it's a secret preserves it, some things get watered down.

17:56You're right. And I agree with that philosophy, like Capfarac, Capfaray, or like a Hamptons type of vibe, or like a lot of states and countries have those kind of like, if you know places. But then you would need the powers that be there to know that, to know what they're protecting. And a lot of times they don't. I understood. I love them. Yeah, yeah. But like, well, I don't, I don't love when they don't have the self -awareness of the wherewithal. And I mean the powers that be to know how special the place is and how we could really take it to the next level. And that's why I feel like a lot of us are raising our hands and making major investments and bringing big investors from all over the world so that we can make it an international treasure.

18:52And even if it's going to be an international secret, let's treat it that way. Do you think of Virginia as your home? Yeah, I mean, I mean, Miami's my home too. Virginia Beach, Miami, Paris, Tokyo. But when you think home, which one comes up?

19:15Virginia's always going to be my home. But we live in Paris right at the moment. My kids are there, going to school like, but then Tokyo was my home for another reason, you know? Yeah. And in Miami, it's just like, that never gets old. Tell me about writing new songs for the movie. I needed to see myself objectified first to write about myself. I've never really written good music for myself. I think I told you this the last time. Like all of my best songs or songs that I wrote for somebody else and we just used the demos. But I need to get me out of the way because when I see me, I just, it's like a mirror looking at itself.

19:58Like there's no image there. There's nothing inspiring. But when I'm channeling to somebody else and it brings something out of me and they don't use the record, that's kind of like, because I'm in service to others. So my best work naturally is going to be when I am channeling someone else and not me. And seeing myself objectify, allow me to have enough separation to get inspired. And so that's where peace by peace came from.

20:28And there's another one called Lego Odyssey. And in French, the way you would say the ego is la ego, el apostrophe, ego. And it would be pronounced Lego. Wow. And that was based on most of my life, my first 50 years of my life, at least the first 40 were just egocentric. And look, society sort of reads that and supports that. You know, I'm the best. I'm this. I'm that. And you're not. You're actually part of an equation. And what you are, when you say I am, you are part of the greater I am and you're lucky to be just existing. You know, am is a noun and am is a verb. Just like God is a noun and God is a verb and love is a noun and love is a verb.

21:30I wrote about the first 40 plus years of my life, because from 40 to 50 is how I made it. It's like a 10 year transition of just this. How did it happen though? What triggered it? I think I explained this to you the last time. Like, you know, happy blur lines get lucky. Three songs that I was commissioned to write. And eventually you got attributed to me due to circumstances. And they were also, like I said, they were commissions. So it wasn't like, you know how to like wake up one day and you're like, yo, I'm going to make, I don't know, you woke up one day and decided you want to do 99 problems, right?

22:14Yeah. Let's pretend 99 problems was solely your idea. Yeah. And most of the songs of your catalog are solely your idea. You woke up that day and decided you wanted to do that. That would lead you to believe that you are controlling your destiny. It would lead you to believe that you sold at many records. It would lead you to believe that like your willpower and your existence is solely in control of everything, every part of the process. Then one day you get three different commissions to do something. So they're not, it is going to be your idea, but it's because someone prompted you. Hey, we need a, the right song for this scene.

23:07Hey, we need a song for this artist. Hey, we need you to write a song to be on our record. You do all of that. You end up being on all the records. They all end up being like number one records and with huge not just number one records, but like 22 million records sold, you know what I mean? On just one song alone, like, you know, and counting type shit. And then you go, oh, I'm not in control. And then it dawns on you that you didn't sell that many records. You wrote a song, you produced a song, and the fans decided to download, share, or like actually buy physical copies. And then those songs are bigger than anything you've ever done.

24:03The songs are like helping people get through their day. It's helped some songs is helping people through their chemotherapies. Some songs is helping people through divorce. Some songs are just giving people hope. Like just a whole bunch of things that like are humbling to you, but then at the core of all of it, you didn't commission these songs from yourself. These songs were commissions. The universe conspired to show you all these things. And it just made me ball. And so that was when I was 40. And you shot clearly? Clear. That's great. I noticed things. Did you feel relief? What was the feeling when you saw it?

24:50The relief that I felt was not quite how you're saying it was a different context. It was more like you didn't give up on me.

25:01I point to the sun, but this sun is one of trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon trillions of stars. But existence, the air between you and I, the molecules in you, the molecules in me, the molecules in the trees, the breeze that we're feeling right now, any and everything that we're in, this matrix that we are in, of existence. That's my God. The outfit and the omega, the all that is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be existence. You didn't give up on me. And you gave me another shot. And you really, really, really demonstrated it through these three songs that I was commissioned to do.

25:52And you left me in on it because I never thought I could ever do anything so big with me being the featured artist. It was all of that. And I never looked at it the same. And it took me from 40 to 50 to like really get to a full place of like just humility. Like there's no need for me to brag. There's no need for me to like and be dramatic and for what? I'm so blessed to exist. I exist at this time and this space, this longitude, this latitude, at this particular juncture I exist. I'm so grateful.

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28:16Tell me about your relationship to the church growing up. Church was everything. That's what we first saw spirit. You know, we saw the spirit moving through people. You know, we're out here in nature right now and as the wind blows, some of these trees with the longer branches, you can tell which way the wind is blowing. Based on which way the leaves are turning and which way the and how the sections of branches are blowing in the same direction. And that's how the spirit is in church. When the spirit is really moving around in there, it's like a wave. You just see it. You know how like you go to a big football stadium and you see people doing the wave.