The one album Pharrell is embarrassed by: “I behaved so obnoxiously”
Pharrell’s been in the music business for a long time now, so, naturally, his style and personality has evolved since his early days. But that means that, when he looks back, some of his older work makes him cringe a bit now.
In 2019 Pharrell agreed to an interview with GQ editor-in-chief Will Welch, who, during their meeting, observed the star doing something unusual. Passing a young girl, “maybe four or five years old,” Pharrell bowed to her.
Welch later brought this up during his conversation with Pharrell—what was the bowing about? Pharrell explained that he had started bowing to people after he met Nigo, the Japanese fashion designer and businessman with whom he has enjoyed a long-standing business partnership.
“Oh, I started bowing almost 20 years ago, when I met Nigo,” Pharrell explained. “Because up until meeting him, my greatest references—the guys that garnered the most respect—were the guys with the big Bentleys. My big brother Jay. Big brother Puff. They were not quiet about being successful.”
When Pharrell was a young, aspiring artist, he looked up to these successful hip-hop stars as idols. “They had created this energy of what success could look like for us as African American men,” he said. “We saw that in Virginia and looked up to that. Like, wow. First of all, it’s possible. Second of all, this is the way you’ve gotta do it. And they had a lot of music to back it up.”
Pharrell initially coveted success and attention in the spirit of hip-hop’s flashiest figures, but, he claims, once he encountered Nigo’s more mannered attitude towards success, he sought to change his ways. “His cars, his houses, his apartments—he was such an incredible collector,” he said of Nigo. “His points of view. But this guy would not say one word. He just bowed all the time.”
Nigo is a product of his home country, Japan, which Pharrell visited and came to admire greatly. “When I went to Japan,” he said, “I had never met a more humble culture. I was like, ‘These people are so kind, and they have the best taste.’”
But this was around 2006, when Pharrell was still firmly within his braggadocious phase as a songwriter, collaborating with the likes of DJ Drama and producing mixtapes showcasing a cocky sort of attitude. This, he admitted, is something that embarrasses him now. “Now, at the time,” he said, “I was still doing, like, my Gangsta Grillz mixtape. I could never listen to it now, because I was bragging so much. I’m so embarrassed by that. I behaved so obnoxiously.”
Claiming that he “didn’t know no better” at that time, Pharrell claims he started to change his ways after meeting Nigo and observing Japanese culture up close. “Nigo’s way of humility, and Tokyo’s way of humility, was seeping into my soul,” he said. “And then the more I humbled myself down, the less I bragged. The less that I felt like I needed to flex. Humility is a skill set. It’s an art form. It’s something you work at.”