Pharrell Williams - In My Mind
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www.slantmagazine.com Rating: 0
elays in any medium are never a good sign. However, in the hip-hop world, pushed release dates come with the territory. More often than not, it's a tactic employed to fine-tune and obsessively polish, a sure sign that the eternally held up record just might be a masterpiece in the making. While dropping the most inescapable beat of Snoop Dogg's career ("Drop It Like It's Hot") and exploding conventional hip-hop with his partner Chad Hugo, dazzling producer-turned-face-of-Louis Vuitton Pharrell Williams's solo debut In My Mind has been gestating for close to two years. Fair enough—perhaps the ubiquitous producer needed a little more time behind the board. But then you notice how the album is being released in July (the musical equivalent of dumping a movie in January) and how the press materials reassuringly wrap Pharrell in a comforting blanket of PR hyperbole. It'd be nice if all of these red flags were just over-anxious label execs covering their collective asses, but no, In My Mind is a strangely stillborn misfire that has a few distracting flashes of brilliance, but is otherwise largely disposable. The guest stars are mostly wasted: the curiously inert Gwen Stefani collaboration "Can I Have It Like That" works much better in pieces on Girl Talk's Night Ripper; "How Does It Feel?" evokes a Kanye West outtake that needs a little more attention; while Jay-Z's guest verse on "Young Girl" briefly elevates that strained Prince/Usher mash-up. More distracting than Pharrell's laid-back delivery is the fact that many of the beats miss as often as they hit....
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