NER*D
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NER*D’s sophomore release, Fly or Die (Virgin), is a record that could only have been made by somebody who’s got other ways to pay the bills. Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams, aka the superproducer team the Neptunes, play all the instruments themselves, and with their plinky piano chords, rudimentary midtempo drumming, and cute three-note guitar solos they sound like the best campus band in Akron busting out the Joe Jackson covers at last call. Taken as a pop album made by pop stars, it’s frustrating, a million-dollar demo tape. But in its disarming determination, its blatant failure to meet pop standards and practices, its casual but thorough punking of the process, the shit is genius. As the Neptunes these guys have magicked up megahits for everybody from Britney Spears to Kelis; that they have the Midas touch but refuse to deploy it on their own behalf shows a respect for the audience that’s otherwise entirely absent in commercial music.
While NER*D’s amateurishness can be endearing on record, live at the Riviera last week it was appalling. For the tour they’ve brought back the wonka-wonka-wacky of Spymob, the white Minnesota funk band (doesn’t that say it all?) that played on the U.S. version of their first record. The rhythm section made cartoony we-are-funking-you-Chicago faces at the audience–every solo or fill was like watching someone give birth. They got off two original numbers, and then Williams and hype man Shay came on. Opening with the title cut, Williams stalked the stage, his voice thinner and reedier than it needed to be to put over bon mots like “My dumb-ass girlfriend / Fucked my friend / She’s a ho.”
More cheers.
Williams continued, undaunted. “You know what all of us–” (motions to audience) “have in common with them?”
