Rihanna and Pharrell, N.E.R.D’s ‘Lemon’
Pharrell Williams has lived many lives in pop music, spending years engineering pop hits as half of the production duo the Neptunes before growing into an Oscar-winning media mogul. Then, there’s N.E.R.D, the genre-bending hip-hop group that allowed Williams to tap into his weirder impulses. N.E.R.D, which includes Williams’ Neptunes co-producer
Chad Hugo and childhood friend Shay
Haley, returned from a seven-year hiatus this week with the new song
Lemon, their first release since their
2010 album, Nothing. To toast their return, the group invited a special guest to trade bars with Williams on the song, handing over the second verse to Rihanna, who tackles her Lemon feature in full rap mode.
Maeve McDermott