The reason why Prince turned down a classic Pharrell Williams track
Pharrell Williams never intended to be a solo artist. Before launching his new career path, the musician was content with life as a producer and a member of N.E.R.D. However, he’d accumulated a series of songs that simply needed to be released, including one written for Prince.
Pharrell maestro stepped out of the shadows and into the limelight in 2003 with ‘Frontin’, a song which featured Jay-Z. Originally, the material wasn’t supposed to be performed by Williams, who intended to gift it to Prince. Although ‘The Purple One’ often penned songs for other artists, such as the Sinead O’Connor hit ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, he was less than grateful to accept songs written by others.
In a conversation with Clash Music in 2018, Williams made the revelation about the hit single, which charted at five in the United States. Pharrell said about his approach to creativity: “All of my biggest songs were songs that I did with or for other people. Collaboration has always been part of my DNA.”
He added: “And, to be clear and to be honest, songs that I ended up putting out by myself were always songs that I wrote for other people. I made ‘Frontin’ for Prince, and even ‘Happy,’ I wrote that for CeeLo.”
Around this time, Pharrell and his accomplice in The Neptunes, Chad Hugo, were one of the most sought-after production teams across the musical terrain, but Prince wasn’t interested in his advances. Over the years, he continued to try to recruit him for a collaboration, but each attempt fell on deaf ears.
During his appearance on the Drink Champs podcast, Pharrell opened up about his numerous failed attempts to work alongside Prince. However, unfortunately, he refused to name any of the other tracks apart from ‘Frontin’, which was written for His Royal Badness. “Prince was so cool. I tried for years to make records for him! My first attempt at making a record for him was ‘Frontin’,” he revealed to the shocked hosts. Williams elaborated on why Prince rejected the effort: “He didn’t want it…he heard the hook and the melodies for the verse. I wrote a different version a little bit for him. He wasn’t into it.”
Furthermore, while discussing ‘Frontin’, he revealed the song “was me pretending to be him. It was just what I thought would be good for him at that time, and he was like, nah.”
Prince was a one-off, and unless he wholeheartedly felt a creative venture was for him, he wasn’t interested. While ‘Frontin’ could have led to commercial success for the Purple One, ultimately, he wasn’t invested in the project hence why he rejected it, which is an admirable trait.
