Pharrell is undoubtedly one of the most innovative minds in hip-hop. Much of that has to do with his willingness to step outside of the box and push himself further as well as his emphasis on collaborating with other artists. In a recent interview, Pharrell revealed that two of his biggest hits were meant for two legendary artists.
Pharrell recently sat down with Clash Music for an in-depth conversation about his career. One particularly interesting part of the interview is when he spoke on his collaborative process. P explained that some of the biggest songs he's written and released were meant for other artists, particularly "Happy" and "Frontin'."
"All of my biggest songs were songs that I did with or for other people. Collaboration has always been part of my DNA." He said, "and, to be clear and to be honest, songs that I ended up putting out by myself were always songs that I wrote for other people. I made ‘Frontin’ for Prince, and even ‘Happy’, I wrote that for CeeLo [Green]."
Despite the two singles having major success, it seems as if Pharrell would still be curious in hearing how those two records, in particular, would've sounded if they were sung by the people they were initially meant for.
"Still to this day I feel like CeeLo would have done a much better job on ‘Happy’ than me," he said. "And imagine if Prince had sung ‘Frontin’? I mean, come on!"