Pharrell's signature four-count start

This past week I was reminded of this video by Genius on Pharrell Williams' signature four-count start:

I’ve been listening to his music for almost 20 years now, I'm pretty sure the first Neptunes song I came across would have been Jay-Z's I Just Wanna Love U (Give it 2 Me). That Neptunes sound was just so distinctive it was really easy to identify the songs they produced in the earlier part of their career.

As a big fan of both The Neptunes and N.E.R.D., it's a little surprising that it's not the 4-beat start that was a tell-tale sign of a song with Pharell's involvement. The styles of The Neptunes and Pharrell evolved, but the laters a lot more but it's quite nice to see he has a signature element to his songs.

I'm not the biggest fan of his solo efforts, especially following the Clones album. In my Mind was a huge disappointment. G I R L was a much better effort and featured some good collaborations with Daft Punk and Justin Timberlake to name just two.

And the tweet that reminded me of it all:

View on twitter

Despite listening to NO_ONE EVER REALLY DIES multiple times, I'd never taken enough notice to the lyrics of ESP but for some reason this line really made me think about the bigger picture.

I've linked to Pharrell's albums on Amazon, but you can also find them on Apple Music.

Pharrell on Spotify

I'll continue to add to this playlist over the course of the week, featuring some of my favourite songs and some you may not have associated with Pharrell or The Neptunes:

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