Pharrell’s “Happy” Becomes A Lullaby

Chris GarnerPublished: May 14, 2014

It's hard to imagine an artist who has had more of a direct influence on pop music and hip-hop over the past 12 months than Pharrell Williams. The Virginia-born producer has helmed hit after hit after hit for the likes of Jay Z, Beyoncé, Robin Thicke and Daft Punk, to name just a few, and his first solo album since 2006, G I R L, was released yesterday (Mar. 3) to critical acclaim—including from XXL. He's also riding the wave of his current No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, "Happy," and an electrifying performance at Sunday night's Oscars, where he narrowly missed out on winning the Best Original Song award.

But it didn't all start out with chart-topping displays of musical mastery; Pharrell started out grindin' just like everyone else, hustling to get placements and features before finally breaking through with his Neptunes cohort Chad Hugo by producing Noreaga's "Superthug" in 1998. Since then, Skateboard P has surfed through the musical landscape with a chameleon-like ability to both dictate and adapt to the mainstream's tastes. Last Thursday (Feb. 27), before he took the stage at the Oscars wearing his now-trademarked Smokey The Bear hat and made the entire theater get up and dance alongside him, the man himself hopped on the phone with XXL to talk about his recent successes, his ability to stay current after 20 years in the business and how he broke through in the music industry out of sheer love for the game. —Dan Rys (@danrys)

If you hadn’t got enough of Pharrell’s "Happy," it has now become a lullaby, thanks to the people who put out the Rockabye Baby series. On June 24, the division of CMH Label Group known for turning Jay Z’s “Big Pimpin” into a song for kids will release a compilation titled Good Baby, Bad Baby.

In addition to producer’s feel good song, the album will also include new renditions of Beyonce’s “Halo” and Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”According to Executive Producer and Creative Director Lisa Roth it is designed to put a musical spin on the complexity of parenting.

"The biggest irony of parenting is you have this baby that's so cute and so loved, but sometimes it drives you crazy," Roth told Billboard. "So this is a little homage to all the parents out there. We thought it was time to do another compilation, and I wanted to pick a theme that would be fun to work on, that had a little attitude. As we were looking through songs we might want to put on a compilation, a little theme emerged for me; there were songs that had a so-called 'good' theme and song titles, and song titles that had a little bit of a 'bad' theme. It grew very natural from there."

[via Billboard]

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