Pharrell's Singing Voice - Yay Or Nay?

[bogey_j]

I always liked it. he can't sing, but he's got soul, and that has to count for something

 

[Kyree]

I'm a Neptunes stan and love his singing, he got one of the best R&B voices in hip-hop imo!

 

[WickedGames]

Cotdamnnnnn, it's a new daaayyyyyyyyyyy

 

[KravenMorehead™]

Depends on the song, he's hit and miss...

 

[Da King]

He's a TRASH ass singer, always has been always will be. He can produce to cover up weakness, sometimes. I'm sure most of the beats he gives people he requires that he sings on it

 

[bogey_j]

up

 

[TheDarceKnight]

It's not a great a voice but I give it a yay. Especially when he said in Scratch Magazine about 10 years ago how it happened. He would do reference hooks for people when giving them beats (basically singing it for them so they could know how to sing it themselves) and I forgot who he said really did this, but it was either Jay, Snoop, or Clipse that heard one and were like "fukk it, leave it on there with your voice" and then people started wanting him to do it. At least in rap. I dunno about NERD and all that. I wanna say it was Jay on Give It To Me.

So in hip-hop at least I don't think he really ever planned to be a hook guy. It just happened that way. Same thing with Kanye. Kanye does the hook for Never Change on Blueprint. He was just doing it as a reference for Jay, but Jay kept his voice on there instead. Same with Guess Who's Back, Encore and Lucifer for Jay-Z. You can hear Kanye's vocals on there.

If you watch Fade to Black you can see that the hook for Lucifer was already done by Kanye. Kanye had a whole damn song for it if Jay didn't take it.

Check out 1:45

 

[a murda]

He's sound like a fake ass Curtis Mayfield

 

[TheDarceKnight]

He's a TRASH ass singer, always has been always will be. He can produce to cover up weakness, sometimes. I'm sure most of the beats he gives people he requires that he sings on it

I used to think the same thing, but I think it's more like they insist he sing on it, just because it's almost like a guaranteed hit. Like how a lot of producers have little tags and stuff so you know it's them, Neptunes beats tags are basically Pharrell singing on them. If you read my above post you'll see that he said it started off as him doing references for people and a couple people just wanted to keep his voice on there. What I didn't say is that somewhere along the line I just assumed he started enjoying it and there are some occasional songs where it feels forced.

Allure by jay-Z is a classic example. I don't even mind him on the hook, but I remember when 9th was remixing The Black Album and Allure was really hard because on the acapellas Pharrell was doing this really weird humming throughout the verses that I never noticed, but now that I heard the acapellas it always distracts the fukk out of me during the song. I remember 9th had a hard time finding a beat for that since the singing was off key.

You can really hear it kick in around 1:20 and 4:00 and on

 

[bogey_j]

He's sound like a fake ass Curtis Mayfield

never noticed that

 

[Revolutionary]

yay