ÉTHE MUSIC WORLD IS STILL THE MOST INNOVATIVE, ENERGIZING, AND ECLECTIC SLICE OF THE AMERICAN- POP-CULTURE PIE. BUT WHAT ARTISTS SHOULD A MAN ACTUALLY BE LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? AND WHO WILL WE STILL BE LISTENING TO TEN, TWENTY, AND EVEN FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW? AS THE 2015 GRAMMYS APPROACH, WE TAKE A LOOK AT THE MUSIC MAKERS WHO, THIS YEAR, LEFT SOMETHING LASTING BEHIND THE LEGACY PROJECT PORTFOLIO PARI DUKOVIC 02.15 GQ. COM 51 PHARRELL WILLIAMS THE MAN WHO NEVER SLEEPS Photographed at Mr. C hotel in Beverly Hills. Thirteen Hours Inside Pharrell Williams’s Relentless Pop- Culture Machine BY DEVIN FRIEDMAN 10:57 a.m. Uniqlo, West Hollywood WHEN PHARRELL arrives, it’s as if in a bubble. Like Glenda, the Good Witch of the North. Starbucks in one hand, two Asian-American women assistants trailing in his wake, a Chanel scarf waving from his back pocket. Uniqlo has closed this store, in the Beverly Center, for an event: About thirty homeless kids have been given a shopping spree. Pharrell Williams, who of course collaborates on a clothing line with Uniqlo, is the surprise guest. He takes a picture with a girl in a her royal smurfness T-shirt and checks out jeans with a kid in a Lakers jersey. Truth be told, a lot of these kids don’t seem to know who he is. Most 7-year-olds don’t even know what a celebrity is. They don’t know that this is the man who, not long ago, was responsible for 43 percent of songs played on the radio in a single month; they probably don’t watch The Voice, where Pharrell is a celebrity “coach”; they don’t listen to “Blurred Lines” and know, hey, the genius behind that song wasn’t Robin Thicke, it was longtime super-producer and current pop star Pharrell Williams; and they don’t know that his 2014 album, Girl, is up for an album- of-the-year Grammy. Free skinny jeans in rainbow colors stacked to the rafters— that’s more intoxicating to a homeless kid than the reigning pop-music genius of our time. None of this bothers Pharrell. He is in his bubble, wandering the consumer video game that is Uniqlo. You could find a worse metaphor for Pharrell than (continued on page 104) 02.15 GQ. COM 53 ST. VINCENT OUR DAVID BOWIE • A guitar goddess with an unlikely knack for strange pop songs, Annie Clark has never quite seemed of this earth. But it wasn’t until last year’s St. Vincent that she truly located a planet of her own, filled with twisted and futuristic odes to rattlesnakes and transgender princes. MORE → Read the interviews: St. Vincent in Luxembourg. Sam Smith on forming a new Rat Pack. And a video interview where Pharrell explains why “Happy” made him awkward. → GQ.COM WHY MAKE“ MUSIC? SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO TO THERAPY OR REHAB. ” SAMSMITH THE NEW FACE OF SOUL • Two years ago, he was cleaning toilets in a London pub. Then, a job promotion: His debut, In the Lonely Hour—part funky falsetto, part electronic church-pop—crowned charts in eight time zones. Whether you realize it or not, you have heard the gospel-choir sing-along “Stay with Me.” The rest of his six-times-Grammy-nominated album is just as rapturous. 02.15 GQ. COM 55 FUTURE SOUTHERN HIT MACHINE • The name fits: Future sounds like a highly advanced hip- hop robot, banging out Auto-Tuned anthems. In 2014 he released his sophomore album, Honest, and a street-eating mixtape, Monster—and may have even secretly helped write Beyoncé’s hit “Drunk in Love.” 56 GQ. COM 02.15 MARKRONSON FUNKY WHITE BOY • We didn’t know what to think when we found out that this onetime party DJ and Amy Winehouse producer had a new album with lyrics by Pulitzer-certified novelist Michael Chabon. Then we heard “Uptown Funk,” with pop’s golden child, Bruno Mars, and saw a zillion drunk girls shaking their asses to it—and happily realized we didn’t have to think at all. Photographed in Gramercy Park, N.Y.C. 02.15 GQ. COM 57 crying onstage in Chicago now girlfriend Tomeeka and New York. In a sold-out Bracy. “Relationships bring STEVIEWONDER Madison Square Garden about experiences—thoughts, THE IMMORTAL concert, he got so excited that emotions, expressions. All when he began to sing “Village of those things create music. Ghetto Land,” he just froze. “I We love love. I love love. I The Wonder become, late in life, a guy who forgot my words…,” he said, make love. I’m a Taurus. It’s meets you for kombucha. He’s totally unembarrassed in the a wonderful thing. But you Years Are Just also a guy who will surprise middle of that stage. “I’m just have to able to make love when Getting Started you with his informed taste so excited to be here.” Most you’re listening to each other BY MARK ANTHONY GREEN in contemporary music. anniversary tours sound and speak, when you’re praising “Kendrick Lamar is extremely feel almost like tribute bands, God. Don’t limit yourself to IT’S BEEN FIFTY-TWO years talented. But not only is he geriatrics trying tap into making love just one way.” since Steve Wonder was first just talented; he has a real something that existed decades Stevie doesn’t really talk, he declared a genius. Stevie was concern for the people,” Stevie ago. But Stevie seems to have preaches. He preaches the a rail-thin 12-year-old in Ray- says. It’s at this point in our an uncanny ability to tap into gospel of love, music, and how Bans and close-cropped hair conversation that Stevie jams the right now. “Take ‘As,’ for Tauruses must be pretty good when his first No. 1 album, the out to his own rendition of example,” Stevie said about at both. last album on which Stevland Kendrick’s new single, “i,” his a song from the same album. Meanwhile, Stevie is busy Hardaway Morris went by braids bouncing into motion, “That was my mother’s favorite learning new instruments—a the moniker “Little Stevie the wattage of his huge smile song. I’ve since used the song to kind of half-guitar half-piano Wonder.” The album was called, going up a few degrees as he eulogize her.” She died in 2006 called the harpejji that he of course, 12 Year Old Genius. uses all four limbs to tap out and is the reason Stevie wanted debuted at the Grammys last Little Stevie is now a 64-year- different rhythms to the song. to start touring again. “When I year while performing with old genius. He turns “i” into the Stevie sing ‘Another Star,’ ” he says, “I Pharrell and Daft Punk. He We met for a glass of Wonder version of Kendrick think of President Obama.” says he’s eating better but now kombucha on a mundanely Lamar—as though everything “It’s a given that you’re going he wants to learn how to dress beautiful Cali afternoon in Los that goes into his ears gets to go down memory lane— more stylishly. He’s flirting. Angeles, where he now lives. remixed before it comes out songs and music always have He’s having babies when most He’s ditched the Ray-Bans and again. “The good thing about a memory attached to them,” people have having grandkids. preppy look from his youth the young,” he says about Stevie said. “When I sing ‘Isn’t He’s still creating what he calls and now affects a kind of Kendrick, “is that they want to She Lovely,’ yes, I think about “sound pictures” every day. “I’m futuristic soul-minister vibe, fix things. They don’t want to Aisha, my oldest child”—the a lover of music. It’s not really with his thigh-length black fall into the same ol’ bullshit.” song is about the birth of Aisha, a challenge to stay relevant. Star Trekky suit jacket and (Icons probably don’t say now 39 years old—“but the In fact, it’s the exact same his visor-like shades. Maybe bullshit, either.) song also makes me think of challenge to stay relevant back part of it’s his tone: His voice Nyah, my newborn daughter. then as it is now.” is gentle when he speaks, as if LAST YEAR, to celebrate the She’s lovely, too.” Nyah, born And what is his secret for passing on wisdom from his fortieth anniversary of the in November 2014, is Stevie’s staying so fully plugged in, fifty- home planet. He laughs softly making of Songs in the Key ninth child and his first with two years after first being called when it’s suggested that he’s of Life, Stevie went out on a genius? “I was on a plane once an icon: “Honestly, I don’t even the road and played his most in Atlanta, and when the plane know what that means. God influential album in its entirety, landed, this lady walked up to is the icon.” I don’t argue with the way entire symphonies me and said, ‘I watched you do Stevie Wonder, because who am get played. For the event, he “ the Wonder dance all flight.’ I I to argue with Stevie Wonder brought onstage with him THE GOOD said, ‘The Wonder dance? What about God? But if you sell over more musicians than the entire is that?’ She was talking about 100 million records, win more Motown roster back when THING when I shake my head and than twenty Grammys, have a the album was made.