Credit: Alamy

Kanye West has inspired a whole generation of artists, but he wouldn’t have had the groundbreaking career he’s had without some of his influences. The Chicago rapper has constantly pushed boundaries in music and fashion, and Pharrell is partly responsible for that energy.

The two artists interviewed each other some years back, with Kanye crediting him with instilling that bravery inside him and wearing previously frowned-upon clothes. Ye wore pink polos in the early 2000s and played a big part in men adopting the look.

“I think one of the things that you, Pharrell, inspired in me was this fearlessness to break the mould,” he said during a conversation for i-D. “You’re the inspiration. Before I wore a pink polo you were wearing a pink polo. That lineage is mapped out and proven, and you can go from then all the way up to the moment we have in culture now. You broke down the doors in fashion for us.”

Kanye went on to explain that Pharrell was the blueprint for everyone who came after him. “Going out to Paris, you had this elegance, it’s not something that even can be learnt,” he said. “Then to be the first guy to have a skateboard on the cover of The Source, for example.”

He added, “These moments, where we had to break out and just do something completely different, that basically has inspired an entire generation. Everything looks and feels more and more like what Pharrell started.”

Pharrell and Kanye have collaborated in the past on ‘Number One’ from 2006’s In My Mind album. They also formed a group called Child Rebel Soldier, abbreviated as CRS, alongside Lupe Fiasco, famously releasing the song ‘Us Placers’, which sampled Thom Yorke’s ‘The Eraser’. As part of The Neptunes, Skateboard P also produced ‘Gotta Have It’ from Ye and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne album in 2011.

The praise doesn’t stop there. Kanye also compared Pharrell to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, for his tenacity in doing his own thing. “It felt like you really tore down the walls and the doors much like Michael Jackson did a generation before, and in a way, he’s very similar to Michael Jackson, in the ways where Michael Jackson was doing covert, super gangsta stuff, like he’d just pop the needles off,” he said.

Before releasing his debut single ‘Through the Wire‘ in 2003, Kanye played the song to Pharrell, who gave him glowing compliments about his future career. “You gon’ make it, and when you make it, keep the same perspective,” he told Ye. “Still keep the same hunger. That hunger is to always be, ‘Man, I feel something, I gotta put it down, man,’ and then you put it down.

“As long as you keep that, the conduit between those two places clear for that energy to come through, you gon’ always be ill for the rest of your life. I can tell when a n*gga is really, really hot, but I can tell when they have the potential to become complacent. You do not have that.”