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Between designing Louis Vuitton's menswear collections, producing and performing hit records, and starring on the cover of GQ's September issue, Pharrell Williams has also somehow found time to author a new book. Carbon, Pressure & Time: A Book of Jewels, which releases on September 26 through Rizzoli, explores hip-hop culture's ongoing obsession with extravagant jewelry and offers an up-close look at Pharrell's own legendary collection.
In this exclusive excerpt, Pharrell and longtime friend Tyler, the Creator have an intimate conversation about their respective introductions to the jewelry game, their favorite pieces of all time, and how they stay motivated creatively.
Pharrell: What’s up bro. How you doin’?
Tyler: Living it.
P: I know that. What’s that music sounding like?
T: I gotta crazy one comin’ very soon. Very soon.
P: What’s going on man?
T: Livin.’ Waitin’ on you, man. Not like for this call, like waiting for the new shit that was supposed to come out ages ago. You playin’.
P: No, I’m not, I’m not, I’m out here in Paris, I just ended up doin’ twelve N.E.R.D records.
T: Can’t wait man!
P: Listen, you’ll have something to ride to. I mean, look, like I told you, they’re big choruses, but you know, out of nowhere, I’ll just come out of nowhere with the three-bar, crazy-nuts chords that go three-bar to four-bar to eight-bar. It’s good bro, it’s good. This is like that feeling that I felt when we made In Search Of...[2001]. I won’t sit here and tell you that they were hits. I knew it was different, and I knew there won’t be nothing out there like this. But I’m talking about the feeling. I wanted to do everything. I wanted feelings. I wanted the motherfuckin’ great composition. I wanted great chords. I want to use chords I never used before, and not just the dreamy ones. The ones that I’ve never done, that I fuckin’ hated. But using them in ways to get to other chords where the changes are such a release. And then, lyrically, the harmonies here…all the songs just have rainbow harmonies.
T: You got me. I need to hear one of these.
P: Please. When do you come here? When are you coming?
T: Dude, I don’t know. I’m so busy, man. I keep thinking, oh, imma go to London. I’ll go to Paris for two days. I’ll go to Japan for a week. And I know I’m not going no-fucking-where. I was editing from 11:00 a.m. to midnight last night. I didn’t leave my motherfuckin’ house. Everyone came here. Finishing, but it’s, it’s some good shit comin.’ You’ll hear it. People gonna love it.
P: That means imma love it, too.
T: It’s one of those, like, everyone I play it for is like, ‘play it back, please!’ Okay…what the fuck was this Zoom about? I mean, you got my number. You coulda just…
P: —cuz we gotta record it. It’s my next book. And it’s on jewelry. Obviously, I talk about what it meant to me, and what it continues to mean to me but I interview people about what jewelry means to them. For example, what was the first piece of jewelry that you saw that intrigued you enough to want to do it yourself?
T: The gold skate pendant you did from, oh, tellin’ 2003.
P: No.
T: Yeah.
P: What? That’s crazy, bro. I didn’t know that made you want to make jewelry.
T: I was in 7th grade, we cut holes in Tech Decks. We slipped to shop class and fuckin’ put a hole in the tech deck, and we put it on our little necklaces, and was runnin’ around with those. But the pink [N.E.R.D] brain one was like, oh! You could really take a logo and do this and put colors on? Because you got a thing… aside from a few Busta pieces, and the Ghostface Killah, nobody was doin’ color. It was all super, there was the G-Unit thing, which was cool. But you had that, and it was all platinum, or white diamonds. All the Roc-A-Fella pieces were platinum and white diamonds. You might get a gold one, seldom. But all the Cash Money pieces, super 18-carat yellow, but it was no color. And that was like, ‘oh, we could do that.’ Someone gave me an Elizabeth Taylor book in 2015, and when I saw what she was doing with coral, opal and all these jades, it reminded me of growing up. I grew up with all these women, grandma and moms and aunts. It was a place of comfort, but how they did their jewelry was different from my stuff. But I started getting into different pieces that wasn’t just a chain. I started getting into certain links and rings because of that piece. You knew that, though. That thing is my favorite.
P: No. You told me it was your favorite, but I didn’t know that’s what started you into it, though.
T: Oh yeah… I based my first real chain on that chain, actually.
P: What?!
T: Yeah, a lot of people don’t know that. It was a little cat logo we had and I based it off of the color palette of that. I did it my way. I did it my way. That was 2013.
P: What is your favorite chain, to-date? Or favorite piece to-date?
T: Of mine? You know what’s funny… probably that first one, still.
P: The cat?
T: Yeah, and I think that’s my favorite, because I could just have it on with white Ts, some cut-off Dickies, some chunk socks, trucker hat or regular-ass hat, like, that’s how I grew up at Hawthorne, with my skateboard and my bike. The fits that are the best, the easiest. I think that’s just my base and my core, and I think I subconsciously just have an attachment to that, because it’s comforting. Reminds me of a hug. So, that’s probably why. And I don’t think it’s the best, it’s not the hardest
P: It’s up there.
T: But it’s my favorite just because of that. But that flower one I got, where the link is just the different garden pieces, that I still think is really ridiculous, because I’d never seen nothin’ like it. So, probably those two. What’s yours, though? Even out of the ones that you don’t have no more
P: Hmm. That’s hard, because I feel like the one with the big multi-stones.
T: The Gucci link? Or the one from 2019. That one was crazy.
P: Yeah. That one was cool.
T: That one… you didn’t pull that one out much.
P: I didn’t. You know why? ‘Cuz I made it, and I just wasn’t in the mood. Like now, I’m in the mood. But now, it’s gonna be all yellows.
T: I’m done for a while.
P: Me too. Me too. I’m just getting there, and I’m gonna sit on it. I ain’t gonna be wearing it like that. I be like, lightweight all the time.
T: I do like that Asscher link you got. I want something like that, that I could just wear every day, never take off. If I do get something, that’s definitely where I’m gonna head. ‘Cuz I’m outta this space. I don’t want another trunk. I don’t want another car. I don’t want another nothin,’ bro.
P: Yes, that’s the right way to be. Just focus on the creativity. That’s what it’s all about at this point. You know, because at this point, you realize, the real true gem, the real true stone is you.
T: Deyee! [laughing]
P: I’m dead-ass serious.
T: No, I feel it.
P: If you look at your lifestyle and what you’re able to do every day, the fact that you get to wake up every day? Bro… you are the gem.
T: Oh, I knew that, don’t get it twisted. I know that. Niggas is very blessed and lucky to have this brain and drive and all of that. The lack of stress. I’m very lucky to have that. Everything else I got in this house is icing on the cake.
P: Yes.
T: You know what? I just want the cake. I don’t even want the icing right now. But that’ll change in two years, and then, I’m like, ahhh.
P: Of course. Nah, you’ll wake up, and crush the internet again. You know what I’m saying? Like you do. Shine.
T: Mm-hmm [chuckling]. Ok back to convo. What’s the piece that got you on your journey, ‘cuz you was fuckin’ with Tito? Like ’99?
P: Yup. Tito first, then Jacob and Lorraine. Yup. And the piece that did it for me, I mean, walking in and seein’ Allen Iverson walk in the club with all of Tito’s stuff, man, believe it or not, he was crushin’ everything. The lights was hittin’ it. We were like, aw man, that’s amazing. I knew that wasn’t my style, but I just respected it. But I was just getting in the game. But once I saw that BET show with Slick Rick…
T: Mm-yeah.
P: And I saw him. And he didn’t even have all of his shit, but he just hurt me, because he had on a shorts suit. And I want to say he had on just one of his chains. It might have been the rope or whatever, but I remember all his other jewelry. And I was dying on television. They just panned over to me, like a BET Awards. I just remember his jewelry. I died, first of all, and then leaving the venue, I called Jacob and I was like, ‘I know what we’re doing.’ And he was like, ‘what?’ I was like, ‘you’re gonna make me a huge Cuban. but then we are going to pavé one side in nice-sized diamonds. We’re gonna do the same for Gucci link, and then, you’re gonna make me a rope, and here’s all the charms I wanna make…’
T: [laughs]
P: And when I got it, you couldn’t tell me nada. There was no talking to me. Big Cuban links are still going on right now, twenty years later…
T: So, you was the first with the pavé Cuban link, yeah?
P: For sure.
T: I don’t remember seeing it prior to that.
P: No. I know. They was asking me. People were calling me, asking me for permission. It was like, it was gonna be a direct bite. Everybody knew at the time, it didn’t exist.
T: That’s hard.
P: Yeah. But you know, I don’t even really look at it like that. Again, I’m just grateful, like you said, to have that mind, and you’re blessed in a position where you can actually go make it.
T: Nah, that’s the best. That’s where I am right now. I’m working on a bunch of random shit that’s so ill. I’m happy. Not only do I have the brain to come up with it, but I made it to where I make the resources to get it done. And lean into it.
P: Man, when people really understand how multi-disciplined you are, how successful you are, and how resourceful you are, there should be a college course on your career.
T: Thank you for the compliment, and I agree. [laughing]
P: You really are the blueprint.
T: No, no, no, I’m not.
P: Yo, listen, bro, motherfuckers if they want to know how to be successful, you have written a very step-by-step, how-to guide.
T: Thank you. I learned from your blueprint. Very much so. Very much so. I definitely absorbed and studied what you did, and didn’t do—where you succeeded, and didn’t succeed, and I based my movement off of that. And it was a new road. I made a new road off of that, so, I hope the young ‘un, the kid that’s 14 right now is paying attention, and take what I did and didn’t do, and take what I succeeded at and didn’t succeed at, and make his own path, because we in a real Control-C, Control-V era right now. And I really hope that the kid out there is paying attention in the way that I paid attention. I was talking to somebody the other day about Jay. I was looking at him in a whole different way than when I was younger. I probably don’t mirror him like most people would think, at base-level, but what he did with Rocawear and these things, I was studying it as a kid. While I got Golf Wang going ten years later, it’s worth this and that, if I decided to sell it. I’m great.
P: Mm-hmm.
T: And I didn’t even wear Rocawear. I did not like that shit, but I studied what they did, and now, because of that, I learned that from him. I learned a lot of that from you, and I just hope whoever comes after me, get they own shovel and build they own little path. So, yeah.
P: And they will. And they will because at the end of the day, you were a diamond in the rough. A lot of us saw it, but most importantly, you saw it. You knew where to cut the rough, what the right angle was, where to polish. I’m saying that for a reason. Carbon, Pressure & Time is the title of the book. Carbon, ‘cuz we black, and pressure, cuz we black, and we know the time it takes. To recognize that you are that gem, and the work it takes to get there. And I’m saying, you’ve done that. That’s what this book is all about.
T: Thank you. I was just telling someone the other day, you, Jay and Ye, all these folks who I love, the greatest, took a liking to me early, even when my shit was not there yet. I’m like, man, they saw something early, in me. ‘Cuz people need cheerleaders, and just having y’all just there really allowed me to get to where I’m at, exactly right now. This shit’s important.
P: Same for me. Same for me. And I tell you this all the time. You’re a fuckin’ weirdo, but I love you, and I’m so proud of you, man. You’re a good guy. You’re a really, really good guy. In your heart, and in your mind…You do it for more than just yourself right now. The millions of people that you touch, bro. These kids are thinking different, ‘cuz of you.
This is an adapted extract from Carbon, Pressure & Time: A Book of Jewels by Pharrell Williams
