The Neptunes
Hua Hsu, while reviewing the new N.E.R.D. album Fly Or Die: “There are the rowdy, absurdly oversized Neptunes who traffic in sex and cartoons (the guys kids love), and there are the signifyin', self-conscious Neptunes whose hybrid-minded compositions and outsider sentiments suggest they're smarter than they are famous (the guys critics love).” Hua Hsu goes on to give the album a negative review.
Brent DiCrescenzo at Pitchfork has also panned the album: “In trying to expand their sound beyond commercial hip-hop, N.E.R.D. has exposed both the shortcomings and silver linings of the genre. Taking the simple chest-beating, booty-humping themes of club hits into overproduced Phish-rock territory merely exposes their offensive banality. Expanding the minimal, percussive rhythms of turntables to florid, multi-layered studio fusion rock only underscores the power of economy. And that's in the "spartan production" sense, not the "Pharrell Williams' presents The Billionaire Boys Club Clothing Line" sense. Each track is bloated and soft like Morgalis' middle, and waxed clean of texture like Ricardi's back. Though Pharrell Williams poised himself at the center of millions of people's attention, he's spilled his head to show nothing but unsharpened pencils.”
Sasha Frere-Jones on Timbaland and the Neptunes: “Rather than specializing in any single part of the songwriting process, the Virginians are creating their own idiosyncratic summations of everything that has worked in the last 20 years of pop. They're harvesters, not crop-burners, and their work is the product of lives lived through digital technology. If you can hear any music you want, all the time, chances are good you'll become an astute judge of what works and what doesn't. Digital technology also enables you to turn what you're hearing in your head into great recordings without waiting for humans, or history, to catch up with you.”
cnwb comments: “Interesting to hear that Timbaland was never a musician. As a non-musician myself, I've always been of the opinion that music is a language that can be learnt by rote through immersion in its logic [...] Learning to play music doesn't equate to a privileged listening position - its structures are familiar to us all, its melodies and rhythms and textures.”
