Pharrell To NEVER Produce For Justin Timberlake Again

by **Nygee** Mon Nov 03, 2008 2:05 pm

The guy has made beats for nearly every single pop artist and has countless Top 100 hits. But it turns out, one of the artist's he was most successful with will never be blessed with another amazing beat from Mr. Williams and Mr. Hugo, together known as the Netptunes. But what's the reason? Did Pharrell hook up with Britney or something when Justin and Britney were together??? Did they get an argument over the direction of Justin's second album and just part ways? Or did they just grow apart musically?

Turns out, it's none of that. The reason is strictly political and label related. Pharrell and Chad formerly had their label (Star Trak) through Jive Records and eventually moved over to Interscope/Geffen Records. The split was incredibly ugly and the artists that got caught in the middle of everything was The Clipse (Hence the 4 year delay in between albums).

In 2002, the pair was unstoppable. Justin had just released his debut solo album (After 3 or 4 albums with boy band *NSYNC) to critical and commercial success. On top of that, 3 of the 4 smash singles were produced and/or featured Pharrell (Like I Love You, Senorita and Rock Your Body) so it only made sense that the following album, Jive Records would want to continue with the same formula that had worked the previous album. Not so. In between 2002 and 2005 when Justin started recording, Pharrell up and left the label and signed with Interscope, bringing the majority of his label roster with him. Once Pharrell was at Interscope, he had a whole slew of artists to work with now including Fergie, Gwen Stefani and more. Skateboard P was subsequently replaced on the majority of the album by Timbo to even greater success.

So how did this go down? Apparently when Jive signed Justin back in the 90's, it turns out his deal is basically a "LIFER" deal, meaning he will likely be with the label for his entire career. Once Pharrell left Jive, the label was bitter that Pharrell took his label artists and caused problems within the labels staff. We're hearing that they decided to "punish" the beat maker in two ways, one is by giving The Clipser ZERO attention and killing their career by not promoting the 2nd album. The second? Not allowing Justin to work with The Neptunes for "FutureSex/LoveSounds". There was no way that Jive would allow one of their marquee artists give a majority of his budget to a disgruntled former employee.

As Justin plans a new album, is there a way around Jive to get him and Pharrell to hook up again? Of course....that is what we like to call the beauties of ghost producing.