material, and those blunt bursts of kick drum would become a trademark of their productions for The Clipse and more. ‘Superthug’ is a great standalone production, but also a sign of things to come: that ultra-nasty bassline would be revisited throughout the group’s N.E.R.D.
They’re good, but on the generic side it wasn’t until the late part of that decade that Chad and Pharrell would start to really develop the techniques that shaped how pop music would sound in the ‘00s. There are early Neptunes tracks dating back to the mid-‘90s, for R&B groups like Total and SWV. Naturally, when you’re restricted to ten choices, a lot of worthy music has been left out, but if you’re eager for more, then check the “See also” footnotes under certain entries.
But this feature deals with The Neptunes as potent chart producers, and aims to combine both their greatest (and mostly obvious) triumphs with lesser-known moments of genius. They also released a classic album: In Search Of…, under their N*E*R*D guise. They made stars (Clipse, Kelis) and they reinvented stars (Britney, Justin Timberlake – they were even behind N*Sync’s best ever single).
Following a somewhat rough late ‘90s (which isn’t to say there wasn’t gold – there’s nothing duller than golden age bores dismissing this period outright), chart hip-hop spent the first half of the last decade as unique and experimental as it ever has been, and these two are the key reasons why. Frankly, they shouldn’t even need an introduction, as anyone who spent this period with a radio will, consciously or not, have had the way they viewed pop music altered by the Neptunes. Between 19, there wasn’t a single hip-hop producer – fellow Virginia Beach man Timbaland aside – touching the Neptunes.Įven Timbaland, renowned for taking the deeply weird and twisting it into chart success, didn’t share the same hit rate as Chad Hugo and Pharrell did in the early ‘00s.
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