N.E.R.D.

While N.E.R.D. began as a sort of busman's holiday for Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, a.k.a. The Neptunes, it quickly took on a life of its own. As production duo The Neptunes, Williams and Hugo became hitmakers in the late '90s and early 2000s, overseeing hits for Kelis, Jay-Z, Mystikal, and countless others. But in 1999, singer/musician Williams and multi-instrumentalist Hugo joined with drummer Shay Haley to form N.E.R.D. and emerge as full-fledged recording artists in their own right. While the trio's first album, 2001's In Search Of , didn't do the same kind of business The Neptunes biggest' hits for others had done, it nevertheless achieved Gold status, and included the minor hit single "Lapdance." But perhaps most significant of all was the fact that the album introduced a strong rock element, where The Neptunes' world had been dominated by hip-hop and R&B (though those sounds were still evident in N.E.R.D.'s output as well). Three years later, the band returned with Fly Or Die, which also went Gold, reached No. 6 on the U.S. album charts, and gave N.E.R.D. a No. 5 single in the U.K. with "She Wants to Move." After falling out with Virgin Records and leaving the label in 2005, the band went on a three-year hiatus, with Williams and Hugo hardly lacking for other projects with which to busy themselves. They re-emerged in 2008 with their own imprint on Interscope and the album Seeing Sounds, which earned the band another Top 10 placing. The partnership with Interscope lasted for one more album, 2010's Nothing. After that it would be another seven years before the next N.E.R.D. album appeared-2017's No One Ever Really Dies found the band shifting to Columbia Records and working with an all-star guest list including Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, and others.