members Chad Hugo and Shay Haley) and being mentored by Teddy Riley.
“Teddy would always talk about Clarence,” Pharrell tells EW.
“You’d hear things like, ‘Oh, you don’t mess with him.’
Credit: Andrew White
But it was because he stood for what was right.
He wasn’t movable, and his energy was immutable.”
A long line of musicians, athletes, politicians, and studio bigwigs would agree with that assessment.
For generations of artists, especially Black ones, Avant was seen as a protector.
Tying it all together was the choir, a representation of Avant’s connections.
“And then you’d see all these dots would align and connect back to Clarence.
When I was watching them, I immediately heard those notes.”
Pharrell had met Avant years earlier, in search of that sage wisdom Riley used to tell him about.
The experience left him humbled.
Those kinds of people, you just want to sit there and listen to them orate."
Pharrell must have soaked up a lot.
His work early on helped pave the way for artists like Pharrell to stand up for themselves.
“The history of the music business, it was always purposely not beneficial to people of color.
And this man was doing that steady, hard work.
He was a game changer.”
Two months ago, he launched a campaign to help make Juneteenth a national holiday.
We ain’t trying to take your day from you."
“Listen man, God has the juice.
The problem is everybody wants to be the ice, and they ain’t got the juice.
They don’t realize you just a straw.
You lucky if the juice comes through you.
Kendrick and I, we just straws, man.
And we know that, we’re aware of it.
That’s the thing, we lucky to be in the cup.”
The light gets shined on them and they get used to the warmth of the spotlight."
