Review: N.E.R.D, Pharrell's Avant-Rap Crew, Gets a Radical Reawakening

In the early '00s, while his career as a pop hitmaker was taking off, Pharrell Williams invented his side project N.E.R.D, with Chad Hugo and Shay Haley, as a dumping ground for his most off-kilter impulses – scrambling everything from funk rock to hallucinatory soul to prog-rock. If their records sounded like a hodgepodge, that wasn't a drawback. It was the whole liberating point. Thefifth N.E.R.D LP, and first since 2010's forgettable Nothing, feelsurgent in a way their music never has,