NER*D
In 1999 Black and partner Kyle Gass made six Tenacious D mini-movies for HBO. The movies are face-hurtingly funny and made the D the stars they imagined they were. That summer they sold out the House of Blues as quickly as a charting rock band, though they had no releases to chart. In 2001 Black and Gass made an actual album for Epic, backed by Dave Grohl and members of Redd Kross and Phish. As the dream metal became real metal, the concept lost most of its punch. The album’s not inept–if anything, it’s too accomplished. The tension between desire and desired is gone.
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That’s what NERD’s In Search Of… is like. NERD is the “artist” manifestation of super-duper-producers the Neptunes. You know the Neptunes, right? Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams from Virginia? No? Jay-Z’s “Give It 2 Me,” Britney’s “I’m a Slave 4 U,” Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass,” ‘N Sync’s “Girlfriend” remix? The dude in the baseball cap who seems to be in every video ever? That’s Pharrell.
And that’s exactly what made the album appealing the first time I heard it–its one-take, doing-it-in-the-dark vibe. But Virgin didn’t release the album, and they kept on not releasing it. Did they want Noreaga part two? Kelis part ten? NER*D sat out much of 2001, though the Neptunes spent much of it in the Top Ten. (You’d think that would reassure a label.) Suddenly, in August, the album came out in Europe. Chad Hugo: “We didn’t know it had shipped in Europe. So we went to [now departed Virgin copresident] Ashley [Newton] and said, ‘We want to redo it,’ and he said, ‘It’s too late.’ We were surprised. But that’s OK. It’s like a remix album out there for the fans. It just came out first.” So the artist had cold feet? Did they just forget they made it?
