Pharrell And His Hat Cover GQ Magazine

Pharrell and his now infamous hat have made their way onto the cover of GQ magazine. His feature length interview for the mag’s April issue finds the award winning producer revealing his views on some interesting subjects. The hitmaking producer and recent Oscar nominee spoke with the men’s mag on the uproar created by his head gear choice at this year’s Grammys, competing with Puffy and Jay Z on his debut album, discovering peace, the G I R L cover controversy, Hilary Clinton’s presidential run and more.

The G I R L cover criticism:
“It’s insecurity. You can be anything that you want to be, and what I chose to do is put my friends on the cover. The girl that was closest next to me is black, but they didn’t know that, so they jumped the gun. And it’s like: ‘Yo, you don’t need nobody to represent you. You represent you. You represent the best version of who you could be. You go out there and change the world.’ Because I’m black, and I wouldn’t trade my skin color for nothing. But I don’t need to keep wearing a badge that tells you that I’m black every time I do something! I’m black! My mother’s black, who’s a big part of my business; a black woman runs my business; and I’m married to a black woman. What more do you want?”

Hilary Clinton is a lock for the Presidency:
"Let me tell you why Hillary's going to win. Everywhere you go in this country, you have red and blue. You got the Democrats; you got the Republicans. You got the Bloods; you got the Crips. Everything is red and blue in this country. You know what else is red and blue? Blood. Blood is blue in your body until air hits it, and then it turns red. That means there's unity. There's gonna be unity. So when you think about a night where there's late-night talk-show hosts and it's mostly women, that's a different world. Right? A world where seventy-five percent of the prime ministers and the presidents were women: That's a different world. That's gonna happen, and it's gonna happen when Hillary wins. Because you know what? No matter how staunch of a supporter you are of no-abortion, whatever you are: You're a woman, and there's no way in the world you're going to vote for somebody that's going to try to tell you what to do with your body. When we are a country and we are a species that has had a martian Rover traveling up and down the crevices of this planet looking for water and ice, okay, and we've had a space station that's been orbiting our planet for sixteen years—but we still got legislation trying to tell women what to do with their bodies? Hillary's gonna win. Listen, I'm reaching out to her right now. She's gonna win."

Why his new album is different from In My Mind:
"In My Mind was just purpose-oriented toward, like, competing and being like my peers—the Jays and the Puffs of the world, who make great music. But their purposes and their intentions are just completely different than what I have discovered in myself that I wanted to achieve in this one. So it makes it easier to sing about, because I don't gotta sing about myself. Jay's good at that. He's great at it. I began to sound so self-serving and so self-satisfied, whereas he can do it and make you feel inspirational about who he is and what his intention is."

His infamous buffalo hat:
“Anything different, people are going to look at and go, ‘Ha ha ha ha, what is that??’ Then, after a while, they do a little bit of research; they realize it’s Vivienne Westwood, an ode to her boyfriend at the time; they had a store together called World’s End. The guy who went on to sign the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren.”

Why he’s at peace in his life:
"I'm at peace because I discovered what my true happiness is, and it's not all these nice things that we get—you know, the byproduct of like, living this life. It ain't that. It's time. It's awareness, and it's experiences. That's happiness".

The interview is available at GQ.com now. The issue hits the stands next month.

Here's a video from the interview below.—G. Valentino Ball

[via GQ]