"Everyone Nose"

"Without girls like you, there's no nightlife/All those men just go home to their wives."

—Amy Winehouse

Left brain:

N.E.R.D: "Everyone Nose" [from the forthcoming N.3.R.D LP]
Virgin/Star Trak

Theodore, Alvin, Simon

Whether or not it's true that the Neptunes' Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams had parted ways (as the rumors have been stating for the past year or so), it is evident that, with the exception of the Clipse's 2006 album, Hell Hath No Fury, the Virginia Beach producers' trademark sounds—e.g., tinny synthesizers and hollowed-out drums—had fallen off. Well, maybe "fallen off" is being too harsh; the quintessential Neptunes sound didn't fall off so much as become increasingly more minimalist and, as evidenced by recent 'Tunes tracks for Jay-Z and Mya, a lot less catchy. Which is why "Everyone Nose," the latest single by Neptunes doppelgangers N.E.R.D (which evidently reunites Pharrell with Chad and sometimes-y factor Shay) is so arrestingly fresh.

Taking a cue from such dance-oriented acts as M.I.A. and Spank Rock, our heroes experiment with grime-subsumed percussion and cheddar-sharp horn bleats that together sound like a paean to The Matrix soundtrack as envisioned by the Bomb Squad on mescaline. Gone are the cologne-spattered spiky gel pop flourishes that, for a time, made the trio's oeuvre ideal for the sort of coked-out model chicks made of Missoni, Mohawks, and $100 Brazilian waxes, i.e., the type of chicks that eat pussy, listen to Prince, and play with their wombs. Which isn't to say our boys have lost their signature Facebook-socialite afterglow. On the contrary, "Everyone Nose," though neither lush nor expensive like the earlier output, takes typical Pharrell foibles (e.g., bathrooms, girls, cocaine) and ratchets the whole shebang up a couple notches on the dance-your-ass-off-O-meter. "Baby, you partied all night," Pharrell, in his soft reminding mother's tone, gently and leniently croons on the song's weirdly melancholic bridge. Guess it's easy to see why.

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Right brain:

Oh, we totally do

Friday, February 1, 2008, 11:00 pm. Somewhere on the Lower East Side.

I would have broke your pretty ass off in the unisex bathroom if I hadn't heard my jam blaring from out there on the dance floor, you drunken hot girl. Come on and let me cuff your Cree Summer 'fro while we grind (no draws and neither does she) to this TV On the Radio joint.

I could tell you're a freak by the way you clasp that glass and my crotch, and the way you pronounced "France," when you told me you spent a year there with your roommate. Will you be my best friend?

12:07 am:

Venue change. Smells like prostitution in this joint. Grab your girl and let's jet. …I don't do cabs, ma, but since y'all are paying…

[We jump out the cab like the Strokes out of a limo]

Damn. Y'all trying to do bottle service? Like, word? I am not at all a baller.

So, what do you do?

I am a marital arts instructor.

[Laughs] Good money in that?

Oh I easily make a good…$19…20…thousand a year.

[Giggles] Seriously though. What do you do?

I whore myself on the streets of New York City.

So, that makes two of us.

12: 51 am:

…And she can do that trick with her eyes closed, too!

What in the entire fuck?!

[Laughs] What can I say? I have a lot of free time on my hands.

Clearly.

1:03 am:

Nah. I mainly stick to the drinks. But to each his own.

COME ON! It's 2008!

[Laughs] Nah, I'm straight.

We'll be right back!

1:15 am:

I just wrote on the mirror in lipstick: 1:12 am: boy at bar with pint-striped blue blazer and yellow t-shirt has (clear) lack of social skills—but cute!

[Laughs] Y'all are WILD, yo.

2:00 am:

Make out/black out.

My tongue is in her ear. Her low-rises unzip easily, like an illegal download.

Now we're talking again.

She's hungry.

I’m mad because there's no waffle houses in New York.

Back to the sweat-soaked dance floor.

Her girl is nowhere in sight.

I'm dancing with some other girl. She's busy flirting with the bartender.

2:59 am:

You could be fucking. But you are no longer in your twenties. And it's, frankly, just not as fun anymore. (Good to know you still got it though!) Maybe maturity is being able to put yourself in her shoes and to cheer her on, because you acknowledge that if she doesn't get it from you this fine morning, she's certainly going to get it from the next man and, well, more power to her!

So before you head out, into the global-warming-induced February sunshine, to the 24-hour pizza bar on 9th Avenue, and then to that not-quite-Striver's Row block you've grown to love uptown, you'll have one last drink—a toast to all the drunken hot girls at all tomorrow's parties.

Who nose [sic] but, that on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?