Pharrell Williams - In My Mind
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arts.guardian.co.uk Rating: 0
There's the "eye-fucking" detailed on Baby, where he asks some lucky recipient to "meet me in the hallways where the bathrooms are", telling her: "I wanna touch you, baby/ Are you by yourself tonight?" The final refrain, "Excuse me, I'm talking to you," suggests that the poor chap is more likely to end up with a restraining order than a groin strain. I Really Like You sees him begging a girl to stay with him; a later track is called Stay With Me, while Young Girl suggests the only action he can get is with a minor. On Dim the Lights he even goes so far as to offer to relieve himself with a lady's underwear, although repeated listening reveals that he's actually saying, "I'm a master, baby, with your bra." Still, the confusion seems intentional, as he continues with double entendres such as: "I know you wanna come in my arms."From a convincing lothario such as Snoop Dogg, such supplications might sound convincing. Listening to Pharrell do it is akin to watching William Hague smiling for the cameras in a baseball cap. You can see the intentions, and you cringe. This is the man who named his record label Star Trak in misspelled homage to his beloved space show, who was in a band called N*E*R*D. He just doesn't make a convincing rapper, and it's not only a question of charisma: his voice tends towards the monotone, and lacks honey. Guest appearances from the smoother-tongued Jay-Z and Kanye West only emphasise that. Years of straightening out other people's singing have clearly given Pharrell too much exposure to studio perfection: he seems to have fed his own vocals through the autotuner.He's still a rebel though. "I don't give a fuck what the tabloids say," he adds at one point. Ah, the problems of the rich, famous and ravenous: suddenly we seem to be in Mike Skinner territory. But this is not one of those poor-me albums; it's not quite Skinner weighing up the benefits of shagging famous birds over civilians, not quite J-Lo begging us to ignore those weighty diamonds dangling from her lavishly manicured hands. There is some of the rags-to-riches stuff, though, but that bit is actually fascinating. Best Friend is the rather touching potted autobiography about Pharrell's childhood: doing maths homework with his grandma, losing his mother to leukaemia, and those all- important crack-dealing kids on the block (essential to the making of any rapper). He says he turned down therapy but sometimes finds this stuff just pouring out.And just to prove he's now in the big league, there is also a song about that friend of all rappers, God. "Jesus is my daddy," says Pharrell, going on to tell the big guy: "Thank you for my power, it won't intoxicate me." It's almost a shame he isn't intoxicated by it: the album has some lovely moments but his powers seems so restrained. Musically, it's largely made up of the same old beats that he was pumping out six years ago, while the only catchy hook comes from Gwen Stefani on Can I Have It Like That, a song that seems to be built around a one-line cast-off found on the...
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