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Pharrell Williams recently sat down with Complex in a Miami studio, where the veteran producer discussed his evolving creative process. In the interview, he spoke about how the SoundCloud era changed his approach to songwriting.
According to the Virginia native, he now focuses on making every section of the song feel like the hook. While there no clear “milestone” for the switch, Pharrell said he was influenced to make a style change by listening to music on SoundCloud, which is mostly “just vibes.”
“If you listened to music that was on SoundCloud, there are no hooks,” he explained. “And so, that made me think to myself, I don’t know if I want to hear a traditional song structure anymore. Let’s just do hooks. I could’ve said, ‘Oh, I just want to do a song for the bridges.’ Hooks just felt like the fun part.”
Earlier in the interview, Pharrell mentioned he was already getting bored with traditional songwriting. “Musically, I just felt like, oh shit! Intro verse, B section, chorus, second verse, B section, double chorus, bridge, double chorus, outro—I didn’t want to hear that anymore,” he said.
Although Pharrell doesn’t name any songs in the interview, Lil Pump’s “Gucci Gang” could be an example of what he’s talking about. It only contains one verse, which is bookended by a repetitive chorus that makes up the bulk of its two-minute running time:
Gucci gang, Gucci gang, Gucci gang, Gucci gang (Gucci gang)
Gucci gang, Gucci gang, Gucci gang (Gucci gang)
Spend three racks on a new chain (Yuh)
My bitch love do cocaine, ooh (Ooh)
I fuck a bitch, I forgot her name (Brr, yuh)
I can’t buy a bitch no wedding ring (Ooh)
Rather go and buy Balmains (Brr)
Pharrell is hardly the only mainstream artist to be inspired to push their boundaries by listening to SoundCloud. In a 2018 interview with Pitchfork, The 1975’s lead singer Matthew Healy shared that “I Like America & America Likes Me" started out “as an homage to SoundCloud rap.”
Read the full Pharrell Complex interview here, and catch up on all the lyrics to Pharrell’s biggest hits on Genius now.
