The Producer

A skateboarder by day and style icon by night, Pharrell Williams has swagger even in his voice. The prolific hip-hop producer shot to the top of the pop charts in 2001 when his beats and blips made Britney a "Slave 4 U"  and in 2004 when Gwen Stefani declared she was no "Hollaback Girl." This year he produced seven tracks for Madonna's latest album "Hard Candy," and last month his genre-blurring group N.E.R.D. released their third studio album "Seeing Sounds." But Pharrell still has time to listen to his iPod, contemplate his tattoos and tell his friends to shut up. He spoke to NEWSWEEK's Oscar Raymundo. Excerpts:

So what are you up to in London?
A bunch of press, we're doing festivals, we're doing shows. It's very warm over here in terms of the reception of the N.E.R.D. album. It's been great. It's been great back home, but it's been great here too.

How was hanging out with Kanye during the Glow in the Dark Tour?
We had a great time, man. Our whole audience and core is basically multicultural. You just have a great time when you're around the people that you know and totally understand and they understand you. We gave people an action-packed show.

How did the collaboration for the Converse-sponsored song "My Drive Thru" come about?
They asked me who I wanted to worked with. And I just picked two of the most interesting people that I could think of, and that was Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) and Santi (White) from Santogold. She's super smart and Julian is super talented. It was a pleasure; the process was great.

They just let you pick two people and you could have picked anybody?
Yeah.

Really?
Yeah.