Pharrell Williams is an Afrofuturist.
“From this moment on, when you look up at the vastness of the night sky and you see those stars moving up there, know that those stars are our African ancestors dancing. They’re dancing in celebration because their lives are finally being acknowledged.”
Image: Spencer Hansen for Spotify Black History is Happening Now: Pharrell Williams
I have to get this feeling off my chest. It grinds my gears to recognize how often music journalists, scholars, fans marginalize the work of Pharrell Williams. It pains me even more when I see how they exclude him from conversations about Afrofuturist music. Maybe it just me that feels that way. Surely it is the stan in me that becomes enraged when I think of these instances. In CNN’s documentary series about American popular culture the episode about 2000s music, “I Want My MP3” I recall one of the experts describing Timbaland’s production as futuristic while deeming The Neptune’s and Pharrell’s songs, in particular, as simply dance music. I’ve noticed that the contributions of their work tends to be sidelined, only to mentioned briefly in footnotes and longer lists of super-producers and artists. Why is that?
As Black men musicians Sun-Ra, George Clinton, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane all have been preoccupied with space and time dynamics as well as water and natural elements in their music. Williams is no different. If Afrofuturism is defined as a remixing of past, present, and future to imagine and explore a fuller account of the Black existence, then why doesn’t Pharrell’s cultural productions count? A sampler of his productions reveal Williams talking about being a milky way master in N.E.R.D’s “Laser Gun” to producing films Hidden Figures film and soundtrack paying homage to NASA’s Black women human computers. I’m not suggesting I believe Pharrell is an Afrofuturist because he mentions the right buzz words on the right tracks nor will my work consist of providing the correct citations to link Williams to the lineages of the Afrofuturist musicians. But I am weary about iterations of Afrofuturism that involve canonizing cishet Black men whose splicing of sonic fragments of Egyptology, Hinduism, and space-time travel fails to make room for those who come after them.
Image: Pharrell Williams Live Earth 2014
“Laser Gun” (Bonus Track) N.E.R.D Seeing Sounds, posted by TP7 Productions
I reviewed of Bottom Of The Map’s Afrofuturism episode in a previous blog post. I wrote “By way of Missy Elliot’s work, [Christina] Lee brings up Pharrell Williams’ productions “Get Lucky” and Hidden Figures wonders whether he should be considered an Afrofuturist figure.” I heard in her voice a bit of skepticism around actually calling Williams an Afrofuturist figure. And maybe the hesitation was a product of the editing, but it really got under my skin. I took some time to think about what unsettled me about that part of their captivating conversation. I realized that I took issue with how Pharrell’s futurism is explained through his collaboration with Daft punk, it’s tied to two white French men. And thinking about the CNN 2000s documentary, I find it is even worse for music experts to categorize his songs as danceable pop music hits devoid of futurist sentiment. I hear a dismissal of dancing underlying those experts’ arguments. It sounds to me as a refusal acknowledge the act of dance as an expression joy and pleasure both of which are essential principles of Afrofuturist theory.
Thinking about Williams’ music in this way discounts all the spiritual imagination and futuristic sonic elements that can be heard in his early works as a producer, a member of N.E.R.D., and a solo artist. And if you can’t hear it quite yet, that’s fine. My work will make a case to open your ears to hear him in a different way. Most recently Williams has been working with lawmakers to make Juneteenth a paid national holiday. In his speech he equates vast of Blackness of outer space with the glimmering reverence towards the ancestors of Black Americans. He states, “From this moment on, when you look up at the vastness of the night sky and you see those stars moving up there, know that those stars are our African ancestors dancing. They’re dancing in celebration because their lives are finally being acknowledged.” Like the hidden figures, the Others his works uplifts, I believe it is time that we acknowledge Pharrell Williams as an 21st century Afrofuturist.
