Pharrell Williams was the kenote speaker for the MIDEM 2010 music business conference in Cannes, France, this past week. Co-CEO of Cornerstone & Co-Publisher of the FADER Magazine, Rob Stone did a lengthy Q&A session with the super producer/media mogul/fashion designer, among a million other titles. GlobalGrind got Rob Stone to speak on the experience of interviewing Pharrell for over 40 minutes. There was a lot going on behind the scenes to make the information sit-down happen. Rob got his James Lipton on and explains how the session went down below.
In the beginning of the video, you mention that there was a delay. What was it? Pharrell was really under the weather. The keynote was scheduled to start at noon and at 11:50am it didn’t look like he was going to make it. But he rallied, pulled it together and did a Michael Jordan in the finals against Utah and got to the venue at 12:10pm and went right on stage. If I didn’t mention that he was sick, I don’t think people would’ve even known.
How did you form the questions? I based the questions on some readings and research I did on Pharrell, but mostly based them on conversations we had and topics that I thought would be important to the audience. The keynote was also formatted to be about music and branding, so I wanted to stay within that framework. It was also very important to me to congratulate him and highlight that he was named the producer of the decade by Billboard. The fact that there are so many great producers and his body of work over the past 10 years stands out as the best is an astounding achievement and I felt like it would set the tone for the interview.
About how many people were in attendance? I believe there were 1,000 people in the venue. It looked like it was to capacity, but [with] the bright lights and the hectic start I really didn’t have time to take a look.
Were you nervous? Was he? I was a little nervous, he was not. After the first couple of questions though, it really got into a flow and was a real conversation. As you can see when you watch the interview, he has some really interesting perspectives and views and it’s easy to be curious to hear more.
How does your business relationship with him afford a different angle on how his mind works? Pharrell has the ability to look at opportunities from unique perspectives. In fact a key phrase he said in the interview, ‘…I pay attention to the empty space of curiosity.’ That is really a gift that he has. It’s extremely motivating and pushes us to think different while he challenges us for new ways to see things. He also has the ability to contextualize his visions in very simple terms. He makes it make sense.
