PHARRELL WILLIAMS @ ELVIS DURAN MORNING SHOW

Pharrell Williams

Pharrell Williams stopped by the Elvis Duran and The Z100 Morning Show to talk about his recent massive success with hit song “Happy,” working with Miley Cyrus and the media’s skewed image of her, and his support of women’s rights. The producer turned solo artist was excited to be at Z100 Studios for the first time promoting his own music. Describing his visit as being a moment for him, he felt it was “a little awkward, a little weird, and a little new” to be interviewed as a solo artist. When talking about the message behind his album ‘GIRL, the music phenomenon said, “At the end of the day, I hope women hear this album and what is at the bottom of the pot is you understand my intention. I’m just saying thank you, you’ve been so good to me.” Pharrell’s album and new single “Come Get It Bae ft. Miley Cyrus” are available for download on iTunes.

To watch Pharrell’s interview, visit ElvisDuran.com.

ON VISITING Z100 AND ELVIS DURAN AND THE MORNING SHOW:

“New York is still the heart of America, in terms of the electricity, you know the energy, the coolest of the cool. It is what it is, and that’s why it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s one of the biggest, THE station in this country. As a producer, I know that because you guys lead the charge. People look to see what you guys are doing to see what to follow. As a producer, I’ve always been thankful to have my record played on this station but to be here as an artist, is a little awkward, a little weird, a little new. So, this is a moment for me.”

ON GETTING A HIT AS A SOLO ARTIST:

“You guys make my songs hit. I’ll tell you what comes first, the song. That’s like a really small part of it, but after the song, then there are the tastemakers, the connectors, and that’s you guys. The rest of picture, are the people who will download a song, or purchase a song, or share it or talk about it. These are all necessary variables for success that are not promised to you, so when they happen you should just appreciate it. I know that as a producer, because I’ve seen that a million times, so for me to experience it I never expected to feel this.”

ON HIS GIFTS FROM ELVIS DURAN:

“I’ve never in all of my years of radio, ever, ever, ever seen anybody do anything like that. That’s super nice. This is another level.”

ON MILEY CYRUS’ REPUTATION IN THE PRESS:

“First of all, Miley is my little sister and I ride forever for her, that’s number one. Number two, it’s very easy to judge when you’re watching someone basically grow, grow up in front of the world. It’s hard for people; it’s hard for the mainstream population to sort of accept that people grow up. That’s why a lot of those shows do really well like, ‘Where Are They Now?’ ‘What do They Look Like Now?’ Unfortunately, or actually fortunately for her, she never got that chance to sort of just take a step back for a second. You know, she went straight from being Hannah Montana, to the very next thing I knew when I saw her and I met her, when everyone was still calling her Hannah Montana, I was like, ‘You guys haven’t met her, you have no idea what’s in there.’”

ON THE MEDIA CATEGORIZING MILEY CYRUS AND OTHER CELEBRITIES:

“The media has a tendency to do that. You know, it categorizes, it classifies. We know you as this, so this is what you’re always going to be. Not true. I’m living proof by the way. So, she [Miley Cyrus], is this enormous, larger than life talent, big personality, knows everything about music, knows all kinds of music, has so many different hues to her personality, and like I said two years ago, everybody looking at me crazy, I said, listen, ‘I’m telling you right now, I know you think you know her but her voice is amazing, and her personality is crazy, and she knows way more about rap than you do.’ And they were all looking at me crazy going, ‘Hannah Montana! Don’t say that! It’s not true! It’s not true! She’s still Hannah Montana.’ I’m like, listen, you guys just need to take a second and get ready for this. Anybody that’s gone to her tour… anyone who’s seen her tour, you’re just getting a slice of who she is, just a slice of her creativity. She is not in a box. She’s so much fun, she’s so nice.”

ON MILEY’S IMAGE IN THE PRESS:

“When you take something out of context, all of a sudden they judge you on that once sentence. When really, the overarching theme could be something completely different. The overarching theme to her personality is just big, and larger than life, and happy. But if you, just look at something that she just posted on Instagram, I mean yeah, you’re catching her in a moment. You know, and what were you doing when you were 21? By the way, and then add in the fact that she has a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of money. What would you be doing at 21?”

ON SPEAKING OUT FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS:

“The executives at Columbia said, ‘Do what you want to do.’ I instantly knew. First of all I’m humbled that you guys want to hear what I think and what’s on my mind. I was perfectly happy writing and producing songs for other people and featuring here and there. I was perfectly happy with that. When they gave me the opportunity, I thought let me give back to the demographic that has been supporting me since the very beginning over 20 years, and that’s women. So I named my album ‘Girl’ and I capitalized all the letters and I put two spaces in between each character because I wanted it to read differently in the text and I wanted people to ask me questions like this. The reason why is because, okay there’s one side of me like, ‘Oh, her eyes, her body, ooh her curves, oh her booty!’ You know that, you know that of me. But what you don’t know is the other side is, how much I appreciate and how much I listen to women over the years and their plight.

ON WOMEN BEING TREATED DIFFERENTLY THAN MEN:

Women don’t make as much as men. I think it’s like 77 cents to a man’s dollar. That’s wrong. That needs to change. So I promised myself that I would as much as I make no apologies for how I love women in every kind of way, I really do, there are some important issues that should be addressed and I’m going to use the platform that they have given me and this opportunity to talk about these things. You know, we’re pretty successful as a species, as human beings, we’ve got rovers the surface of Mars, a space station that’s been up there for over 20 years. But we’re also the same species that tries to tell women what they can and can’t do with their bodies. That’s gotta change. A woman reserves the right to choose because if they all decided right now, that they wanted to shut down the economy and don’t go to work and don’t come home. If they ever really got fed up with us and said you know humanity sucks, they could just hold hands and decide that we’re not having any more children and we’d just be done as a species. So I feel like that we should treat them with that type of pertinence in public, we should treat them to this way when it comes to laws. Women actually are the centerpiece of humanity and the reason why we’re here. We need laws that reflect that and we need treatment like that.”

ON THE MESSAGE BEHIND HIS ALBUM ‘GIRL’:

“My album is not perfect because I’m a man. And I’ve been asked the question too, ‘Are you a feminist?’ If feminist means stands for equality, then yes I am. I don’t personally think I reserve the right as a man because I know I’ll be flawed at times. Women go through things that we’ll never understand, dude, like once a month they go through something we’ll never understand. At the end of the day, I hope women hear this album and what is at the bottom of the pot is you understand my intention. I’m just saying thank you, you’ve been so good to me.”

ON HIS EMOTIONAL OPRAH INTERVIEW AND THE SUCCESS OF ‘HAPPY’:

“Well first of all, Oprah herself is a force. She’s just like this beautiful force. Anyone can talk to her, but with the combination of her and the combination of it being that moment. When I saw the video, that compilation was just super overwhelming and I felt used in a very positive way and I felt so humbled that I could be the vessel to deliver a song like that, that could grow and become so much bigger than anything that I could have ever written. So I’m watching, and it was like, with anyone else it’s like when you write a song and it becomes something big, it’s like oh I did whatever. For me, I look at it like, man I just made this little baton and look how far it’s traveled. People were just passing it to each other, by a way of like uploading their own videos and it just became overwhelming. I’ve been seeing what’s going on and it’s crazy, okay cool, it’s no longer my song, it’s the world’s song. But when she’s [Oprah] showing it to you and you’re seeing Poland, Africa, and you’re seeing France, all these countries it was a little too much for me. So you know, yeah I wept, I did. “

ON THE SECRET TO HIS SUCCESS:

“Listen. You gotta be open. You have to be open. When you think you know the answers, you’re finished. You just have to remain open. There’s no doorway, there’s nowhere else for you to go. You have to be open.”

ON BEING GRACIOUS TO OTHERS IN THE INDUSTRY:

“You need to be gracious because there’s millions of people, 7 billion people on the planet. So let’s just assume that there’s only one million great writers, only one million great writers when we know there’s far more. For some reason, what are there only 30 slots here? 30 to a million. How fortunate are we, when someone stands behind your song. So it’s like a big mosaic, right they take one piece out, it’s incomplete. The one piece that I’m responsible for is the song. Like I said to you guys, it’s the tastemakers. After that, it’s the people. There are so many great songs because the Internet has basically turned music and art and everything all-content into ubiquity at this point. So when we’re chosen, you’ve gotta give it up, you’ve gotta give it back to your fans. If they don’t vote for you, you’re dead.”

Photo Courtesy Of: Robin Marchant/Getty Images/Elvis Duran