| The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth Dorian Lynskey (taken off internet September 2,2001) London's Mayfair Club doesn't host many record industry parties, and when it does, the podium and pole in the centre of the room don't see much action. But this is the launch of In Search Of..., the debut album from hip-hop/soul/pop/psychedelia sensations N*E*R*D. The first single is called Lap Dance and, with a literal-mindedness that would certainly have spiced up the launch of Aerosmith's Love In An Elevator, N*E*R*D have decided that nothing short of a proper lap dancing night will do. Fake $1000 bills ("E PLURIBUS NERDUM") are handed out upon arrival and it only takes a few free beers to bring out the amateur roué in the assembled liggers. One man, his glasses practically steaming up, has procured the services of no fewer than three dances and is goggle-eyed with excitement, as if all his Christmasses have come at once. In fact, as they wind and grind around him, it looks as if he may have come at once as well. Midway through the evening the podium is cleared for a brief Q&A with N*E*R*D's core duo of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo.This stab at professionalism lasts a mere five minutes as the partygoers weigh up the relative charms of two male products versus lots of tall, blonde women in tiny bikinis. Note to PRs: it doesn't matter if you're launching a Last Of The Summer Wine boxset, if you have strippers, men will honk and clap like performing seals. All this would be the cheapest of tricks if not for the fact that In Search Of... is one of the most stunning albums you will hear all year — a whip-smart whirligig of digital rock, hormonal funk and psychedelic soul. As the Neptunes, Williams, 28, and Hugo, 27, have already remade hip-hop and R&B in their own image, producing radical digital soul for the likes of Kelis, Jay-Z and Ol' Dirty Bastard. Next up for the Neptunes treatment are Britney Spears and Limp Bizkit, with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder as definite maybes. Put it this way: if you haven't danced to a Neptunes record yet, you soon will. N*E*R*D, however, are in a different league. Two hours before the shenanigans commence, Williams and Hugo (N*E*R*D's other vocalist Sheldon 'Shay'' Haley is absent) are sitting in a west London studio,fresh off the red-eye and bleary with jetlag. Getting coherent answers from them is like pulling teeth, albeit entertaining teeth. Hugo, the duo's Ernie Wise, is sporting sensible denim. He is polite, down-to-earth and half-asleep. Vocalist/lyricist Williams, his arms smothered in tattoos, is rocking the redneck biker-pimp look: leather jacket, diamond ear-studs, a T-shirt by helium-voiced '70s rockers Rush, and a green baseball cap advertising a livestock auction in Arkansas. "I ate a weed brownie and that's it," he sighs. "No more weed brownies and no more calling me D.R.U.G.S, I was hallucinating! Man, shit was morphing in front of me and everything. The thing with weed brownies is the THC level hikes itself up so you can use dirt weed, but the girl that made it for me used hydroponic, which is good weed, and she used a lot of it. So I had six of them. I was throwing up and everything.'' "You were on the toilet for about three hours,'' offers Hugo helpfully . "And then you feel asleep on the toilet.'' Hugo takes hallucinogens in his stride. Hugo and Williams are a classic yin-yang double act. They met in school band — Hugo on trumpet, Williams on snare drum — and spent their school days skating, BMXing and rapping. At one point they were in a hip-hop group with Timbaland and his rapping sidekick Magoo as the splendidly-named Surrounded by Idols.They are keen to point in the Sellotaped glasses, Star Trek convention sense. Williams's main goal: "A family. I want a wife, I want kids, I want the whole life.'' "One song, Provider, is about just that and he's quietly envious of married, father-of-two Hugo. He used to date Kelis (who graces album highlight Truth Or Dare) and may be doing so again, judging from this right-lipped silence on the matter. Other than that, there's just the small matter of changing the world. "We've got to unify,'' he decides. "Stay together. And run to the sun.'' Aren't you just reciting song titles off the album? "That's what it's all about, really,'' he says wistfully. "Staying together and running to the sun.'' And a bit of lap dancing, obviously. That too. The single Lap Dance is out now. The album In Search Of..... is out on July 9. — By Arrangement with The Guardian http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/140601/htc05.asp |