N.E.R.D - No One Ever Really Dies (2017) [Official Digital Download]

Self-titling your fifth album sends a signal. The glad tidings are that No_One Ever Really Dies is not one of those rock fusions NERD have made in the past just to prove how versatile the production duo of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo (and their childhood friend Shae Haley) could be. NERD are not only back, for the first time since 2010’s Nothing album, then, but relevant – political, even, in marked contrast to their slinkier incarnations. You get the impression that, however huge a hit Happy was for Williams, there was a desire for him to make some beats that could in no way soundtrack a children’s film. There is a strong Yolo bent, redolent of Pharrell’s Skateboard P days, to No_One Ever Really Dies. One track, Don’t Don’t Do It!, even breaks into something like ska. This is a brash, busy party record with its eyes wide open, in which the NERD brand is thoroughly refreshed.

Rhythms and visuals to the fore, the tracks that have emerged thus far are the album’s more ferociously direct. Featuring Rihanna rapping bars – a first – the lead-off, Lemon, cribs from trap and the kind of pristine dewdrop beats NERD, the Neptunes and Pharrell solo have previously deployed in their more minimal phases.

Another A-lister, Future, is front and centre on the banging 1000 – a deranged new wave take on trap, whose rich video churns through recent riot footage, the Dead Kennedys (“Nazi redneck assholes fuck off!”) and some fierce formation dancing. By contrast, the equally fraught Rollinem 7’s hauls fellow funky elder statesman André 3000 out for a verse.

Tracklist:

01. Lemon feat. Rihanna
02. Deep Down Body Thurst
03. Voilà feat. Gucci Mane & Wale
04. 1000 feat. Future
05. Don't Don't Do It! feat. Kendrick Lamar
06. Esp
07. Lightning Fire Magic Prayer
08. Rollinem 7's feat. André 3000
09. Kites feat. Kendrick Lamar & MIA
10. Secret Life of Tigers
11. Lifting You feat. Ed Sheeran



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