Having accidentally landed at a kind of funkified cohesion on their previous record, this third album sees Chad Hugo, Pharrell Williams and Shay Haley re-establish N.E.R.D as a playground for eclectic, provocative ideas. Loosely themed around the concept of Williams’ synaesthesia, Seeing Sounds bustles with an ebullient curiosity (leaving room for the club-ready drumline of “Everyone Nose…” and the ‘60s handclaps of “Windows”). “Sooner or Later” may be the peak though, a seven-minute epic of soulful crooning and giddying, cacophonous guitars.
- 2001
- 2011
- 2001
- 2016