Pharrell's new episode of his Beats 1 radio show OTHERtone finds him digging into Virginia's rap history as well as exploring its future. Pusha T and Fam-Lay, two of his earliest collaborators, guest on the show, as does D.R.A.M., the state's most recent export.
Any Star Trak fan will find great moments throughout the episode, but one particularly interesting portion comes when Pharrell and Pusha T, who have been working together for two decades, describe one another's strengths on the mic.
When Pharrell was asked about how it felt to hear Pusha start to work with other producers in his solo career, he ended up getting into the essence of the former Clipse rapper's appeal. "What he is becomes deeper, if that makes any sense," he said of Push's approach to different production styles. "He just has his own world that just continues to get deeper and deeper... I'm like damn, 'where do you find those metaphors, bro?' Like he rhymes so much better than me, he always has."
Pusha was quick to interject after Williams started downplaying his own rap skills. "Magnum the Verb Lord aka Pharrell Williams," he said, referencing P's original rap name. "It's an an ill advantage when you make the beat and you rhyme on the beat. [Pharrell] hears things and finds pockets that I can never find. And he will give it you on a beat."
This only inspired Pharrell to dive deeper into Push's unique appeal. "Your ability to chase the emotion, the darkness in a beat. It's so crazy to me," he said. "He comes to me like 'I want devil beats, I want the darkness, I want demons.' ... He's always gonna be 19-20 years old, being the kid that listens to grunge music and only wants to make records that are just as hard as any of those things. Like 'nah, you gotta go in a darker chamber.' He uses all the materialistic stuff to make a mosaic to match the emotion -- Like Damien, like you're listening to The Omen or some shit. What Lex [Luger] makes beat-wise, vocally, that's what [Pusha] is."
Watch a clip from the interview above