RIOTUS

It’s hard to be objective in regards to Pharrell Williams. We’re both Aries, and our birthdays are four days apart. He’s from the same region of the US that I am, and he’s one of the biggest creative stars to come from the mid-Atlantic region. When folks are in groups talking about Hip Hop and Rap and the best producers come up, I pick The Neptunes. They had a period of time in which they dominated all of popular American music. The Neptunes were Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, and from there, Pharrell called, at times, Skateboard P entered into the mainstream with a very different type of Black male within the popular space. Pharrell was into Star Trek (Star Trak was his label), he knew cartoons (Jabberjaw‘s band was also The Neptunes), and he was in love with Japan at a time when it was just at the forefront of cool that no one was up on yet. Well, P was there. Pharrell was skateboarding, and other than a few that were on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Lupe Fiasco, Black kids weren’t skating like that. On top of all that, he and Chad’s musical productions and arrangements were like listening to the future. – Note their peers Timbaland and Missy Elliott, who broke a little before them, also made sounds of the future – This film, Piece by Piece, is, I guess, a documentary through Lego animation of his life as told to Morgan Neville along with an interview with his peers.

The film goes through what you’d expect from a documentary biopic about a musician. Still, it is animated and clearly connected to how Pharrell views the world and his push for creativity. Using a toy that is made for the person playing with it to be creative allows the filmmakers to show some of the creativity is for him and might resonate with many viewers. There’s a joy here in seeing Lego versions of classic Hip Hop, R&B, and Pop videos littered throughout the film. It’s a film that, for later Gen Xers and Millenials, will be the time tunnel of wonderful musical nostalgia for a different time, a pre-Taylor/Drake/Kanye time. Everything is so bright and hopeful when you see things through minifigs. Snoop Dogg turning into a dog like in the What’s My Name video is even more hilarious. The film is made to be watched with younger people to inspire them but also to inspire his peer group and those he’s influenced too. There’s only one curse word in this film, and that’s when he talks about the feeling of post-Mike Brown and the Ferguson protests, which leads to the section about making Kendrick Lamar‘s Alright. The film also makes a fun choice in visualizing Pharrell’s Synesthesia and how the beats look, these little jumble of parts put together in these fun little objects like you’d make with whatever leftover little Lego pieces you’d have when making a big construct. It’s fun to see these little objects pop and bounce on the screen with the different elements of the arrangement, how the characters are wowed by seeing it, and what opens up for them.

When I left the theater for me, the closest experience I could compare this to was The Yellow Submarine. I think it shares something similar to the other Beatles films and was an easy entry point into The Beatles‘ music and their place within US culture for kids and people not really engrossed in Black music of the late nineties and two thousands. While for folks like me loving the celebration of one of the biggest modern musical and creative geniuses, it’s more than just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It’s made to inspire and also show those that certain things are possible and, that it’s okay to be “different,” and that it’s all part of the human existence. While I think it could’ve been maybe five to ten minutes longer but, it is a family movie, and the brevity is admirable for that.

Score: B+