Pharrell was hurting a while back... not civilian hurting but rich people broke if that makes sense & since The Neptunes had broke up & hadn't had a hit record in about 8 years he had to abort his flashy lifestyle & come back down to earth. People assume just because you have placements, hit singles, clothing lines or shoes or whatever that you have money when in fact most artists LOSE money on those ventures & keep them up simply for show. It's an image/perception thing. The Neptunes were pulling in $100k a beat a decade ago & when they stopped putting records on the charts you had a lot of up & comers at a tenth of the price getting Singles that were charting so their prices came down a LOT. Once you've started living a million dollar a year lifestyle its hard to go back to living a $100,000 a year life. Pharrell had to put up his condo in Miami, defunct Star Trak (filed bankruptcy on it) & downgrade his vehicle in 2010. I worked with one of his artists that was signed to him in 2011 & he could only front her a $15,000 advance. Chad wasn't flashy so he had no reason to work any harder then he was but Pharrell's financial challenges forced him to have to stay working so that's why he went Solo.
Now that he's had a #1 Single again & another Top 5 record he's gonna be living in that $1,000,000+ tax bracket again... just signed an artist deal with Columbia that's similar to Zedd's deal with Interscope... he's back brehs...
I was looking at thumbnail version of this:
