Hype surrounding Daft Punk's upcoming Random Access Memories will just not go away. Fans have been obsessed with news regarding the new album, eager for newly leaked material, music videos, interviews or rumors. Basically anything they can get their hands on. The rapid success of their first single "Get Lucky" set the tone for what's sure to be on of the summer's biggest, most celebrated albums. Random Access Memories hits stores May 21, but fans already want more. Hopefully, this exclusive VIBE interview with Pharrell Williams, where he talks about working with Daft Punk and the current state of electronic dance music (EDM), will help tide them over while they wait.
"There's definitely some good EDM DJs and producers out there, but its just one night," Williams said, talking about the rapid coming and going of semi-one-hit wonder DJs. "I think for [Daft Punk] and for me it just became too corporate. When the corporations get involved, they tend to have you go so commercial that you sort of lost what got you there in the first place."
Williams went on to talk about how he first met Daft Punk and how the music industry has changed since their first encounters at Virgin Records. "That was like a different day," he said. "When we were in that creative world," forward thinking and expression in music were encouraged and cherished. "The Gorillaz were there too. I met them at a time when our record company was like a frat house. Everyone celebrated their differences, the differences were the things that made them rare and gave them their value and it was just awesome."
"It was like going to the school of Xavier from 'X-Men,'" he said. "But those kids realized they had superpowers. They just didn't know how to use them and thought they were weird because they were mutants amongst the rest of the kids. That's how I felt when I got there."
Although Williams believes that EDM has taken a turn for the worse, he sees Daft Punk as its savior. When the French duo's music first made its way to the States, "there was a [dance music] scene, but it wasn't what their music made it be [what it is today]. All of a sudden you just hear the rest of the world copying their sounds and variations of their inspiration that they left for people over the last 10 years."
"It's like when the corporations try to cash in on [EDM], they kill it a little bit, and [Daft Punk] are like 'man we need to continue to do what we've always done, which is invent.'"
Their ability to invent has clearly paid off. "Get Lucky" has gained nearly 11 million views and has already been credited with the revival of electronic disco, and there's much more where that came from.
Random Access Memories hits stores May 21.
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