Rapper-producer Pharrell has new CD, big plans

Take one look at Pharrell Williams' resume - or scroll down his Wikipedia page - and you'll see that he's accomplished a lot.

But Williams, who is one-half of the genre-bending production duo The Neptunes and frontman for rap-rock trio N.E.R.D, said there's still so much more he wants to achieve.

"I'd love to work with Eminem. I'd love to do it," the 37-year-old Grammy winner said in a phone interview Tuesday from Seattle. "It just hasn't happened yet."

Williams, who has created hits for Jay-Z, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, said he's interested in producing tunes for country artists, too: "I just haven't had a chance yet. But I'm going to, for sure."

He said he and Spears are "going back and forth" about work on her upcoming CD, and after scoring the soundtrack for the animated 3-D movie "Despicable Me" this year with Hans Zimmer and Heitor Pereira, he's planning to do more such projects.

Williams wrapped up a national tour with virtual band Gorillaz on Wednesday. The rapper-producer also is busy promoting the latest N.E.R.D album, "Nothing," out this week.

Williams said before finishing the new CD, the band decided to eliminate the songs from the early recording process.

"We started out doing one thing and we scrapped it all and decided we wanted to do something different. So we stopped everything and we started with nothing - and that's what we titled the album," he said.

Williams said the unused material could make its way to another record.

"That music is great. I just didn't think it made sense for the next N.E.R.D album," he said.

Though past N.E.R.D albums have been produced by its band members, the song "Hypnotize U" from the new CD was produced by electronic duo Daft Punk.

"I remixed `Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' for them like 10 years ago so that was a great feeling to do that (and) to work with them again," Williams said, adding that he's open to other producers creating music for him and his band.

He said the band plans to create music videos for each of the 10 tracks on "Nothing."

"We were just thinking about the music for the most part," he said of the recording process, "but then like once you, you know, heard the whole body of work, you're like, `Man, we got to do something (more).'"

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Online:

http://n-e-r-d.com