Who is N.E.R.D.?

By producing instant classics with stars including Jay-Z, Beenie Man and Ludacris, they’d become as crucial to songs as the performing artists, in the process making the formerly drab title “producer” extremely fabulous.

The following year, the Neptunes – Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams of Virginia Beach – branched out, tackling pop with their trademark spacey, futuristic sound dripping with synthesizers and knocking with drums. Thanks to them, Britney Spears’ “Slave 4 U,” went No. 1, pretty much around the world. Radio stations and MTV kept Neptunes’ tracks spinning more than the globe itself, and the biggest names in music – Prince, Moby, Sade – were knocking for hits.

Adding their longtime friend Shay Haley to the mix, the Neptunes became N.E.R.D., an acronym for No One Ever Really Dies, and in 2001 delivered “In Search Of …” a sexy mesh of rock, hip-hop, new wave and metal that became a sensation among underground trendsetters. Without the promotion that labels relied on back in that pre-blog era, N.E.R.D. quickly became the Next Big Thing, a fringe phenomenon as big as the trucker hats Pharrell helped popularize at the time.

“When we were doing that hybrid stuff it didn’t co-exist with anything else,” Pharrell said. “It was kind of its own weirdo thing.”

“In Search Of …” went gold (500,000 units), certainly a feat, but that only highlighted the disparity between the two outfits, since most Neptunes-produced tracks quickly went platinum (a million units).

Critical reviews of N.E.R.D.’s project were mixed, and some huffed that N.E.R.D. was just a pet project, like a clothing line or fragrance, for these suddenly rich megastars suffering an existential crisis under the weight of their own popularity.

Yet these days, with N.E.R.D. stumping all over the country in support of their third album, “Seeing Sounds,” out June 10, they’re proving this band is more than a fluke. Actually, members said, N.E.R.D. always has been more representative of what’s on their musical minds than their Neptunes work. Their fashion-art-hipster music may still not be playing on America’s rigid radio formats, but with a spot on Kanye West’s tour and a third album coming out, N.E.R.D. may finally become famous for being N.E.R.D. than for being a side hustle for the Neptunes.

“What’s cool about it,” Pharrell said, “is that in the cool circles we got that respect, so we really appreciate our core.”

Earlier this year, the group played small concert halls including The National in Richmond. “And that’s why we did that tour before the Kanye tour, in the secondary market, because those are the guys that made us. With this tour we’re playing much bigger venues. And with the Internet being much bigger than what it was nine years ago when we first started, it’s a whole different ballpark. BET put us on ‘Rip the Runway’ when the single (“Everyone Nose”) was freshly leaked - that’s a big move.”

The group is featured on the cover of The Source’s June issue – a slightly bold move given that the magazine has always been a strictly hip-hop bible. “I wouldn’t peg them either rock or hip-hop and that’s the beauty of it,” said senior editor Juan Pablo.

If so, the Internet is definitely helping, because radio never did know quite what do to with them. Even though N.E.R.D.’s second album “Fly or Die” (2004), went gold, rock stations generally found them too hip-hop and vice versa. This sometimes sent the people who actually worked at the stations into a state of quiet grief.

“It’s really innovative and awesome,” said Bob Fresh, one of the jocks on alternative station 96X, who said he played songs from N.E.R.D.’s first album ‘like it was going out of style.’ “The rap kids don’t like it, and I don’t understand, because it’s good and creative,” he said, adding that some listeners of 96X would call, wondering why they were playing rap. “It hasn’t caught on, and it’s kind of disappointing.”

Pop station Z104 didn’t play much N.E.R.D. either when their albums came out; music director Shaggy said they are “too hip for school.”

DJ Bee of hip-hop station 103 Jamz occasionally slipped the N.E.R.D. remix “She Wants to Move,” featuring Mos Def and Q-Tip, into a medley, but N.E.R.D. generally does not play on slotted air time. He digs N.E.R.D., but would never play it at the hip-hop clubs where he spins around town. “You can’t get away with it,” he said.

He also made an important point: N.E.R.D. was at the forefront of the rock-rap-skater hybrid movement that’s big now, but such counter-culture types “are the people who don’t listen to the radio.” It’s as if the group exists in its own galaxy, one inhabited by people bored with limits, labels and convention.

Adds Pharrell, who went to Princess Anne High School, “We are just by-products of Virginia Beach.”

He is often spotted at the Mount Trashmore skate park when in town, and he sponsors a pro skate team called Ice Cream.

“I went to school with kids that listened to nothing but rock,” he said. “I went to school with kids that listened to nothing but hip hop. In school I had to play nothing but jazz or classical. A lot of my friends listened to nothing but progressive rock, grunge, indie. Who we are as individuals is N.E.R.D.”

“With the Neptunes,” Hugo said, “we have that ability to collaborate with artists, and they have their vision and we’re there to paint different scenarios. As N.E.R.D., what we put out is directly from our brains to the stage. We’re in our own shoes. We have the ability to be ourselves.”

The lesser-known individual from the group is Shay Haley. He is depicted on the cover of the first album looking very Virginia – tube socks and flip flops, playing video games on an overstuffed couch – but has remained otherwise enigmatic. This go-round, he’s out in front.

“I’ve been interacting with people on MySpace,” Haley said. “Fans requested to hear more of me. So we listened and gave them what they wanted, while doing what was necessary for the songs. We all decided I should be a little more vocal.”

It’s hard to imagine how Haley could have been more vocal (or less provocative) on N.E.R.D.’s lead single for “Seeing Sounds” - a drum & bass tinged track called “Everyone Nose.” Haley opens the jittery, jazzy song screaming, “All the girls standing in the line for the bathroom!”

It’s a tongue-in-cheek zeitgeist track that never explicitly reveals its topic, but anyone paying attention can’t help but catch on as the guys blow through lines like, “A hundred dollar bills/ Look at-choo, at-choo!”

“The whole concept was based on observations on what we were seeing the past couple of years,” said Haley, who pointed to the abundance of tabloid celebrity worship in recent years. “We’re not glorifying it, but making an audio version of it.”

Says Pharrell of the song, and “Seeing Sounds” in general, “It’s a 40 ounce of Red Bull.”

N.E.R.D. typically fills songs with double entendres. “Lapdance,” their very first single, seemed like a simple enough ode to exotic dancers, but they said it was actually a parallel between exotic dancers and politicians. Both, Pharrell said in interviews at the time, vanish when the money does.

Who but a trio of nerds could snatch strippers and politicians from their nests and bake them into a song critiquing the government?

Malcolm Venable, (757) 446-2662,  malcolm.venable@pilotonline.com