Pharrell Williams has said that he will continue fighting for the rights of the needy and voiceless regardless of the outcome of the US Presidential election.
Addressing Web Summit in Lisbon,the artist and entrepreneur gave a wide-ranging talk about subjects including his journey to success; his astonishingly lucky break as a young musician; his entrepreneurship vision for minorities; and his belief that the American Dream should not be about making money, but about doing a job you love.
But speaking just days after President Donald Trump’s election victory, Pharrell also addressed the divisions caused by the result.
“There is so much divisiveness out there right now. I know how you guys feel – some people feel one way about the election, some people feel another way,” he said. “Personally, I see myself as a merit civil servant. I’m going to serve human beings – the needy, the innocent, the voiceless. I am going to serve them no matter who is in office. That is my universal job.”
Pharrell made his comments while speaking about Black Ambition, the non-profit organisation he founded to help support Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs by investing in their high-growth startups.
Pharrell said that Black people worldwide, but especially in America, deserved far better than they were currently getting. “We’re always asking; we’re always pleading, at times; we’re begging, at times; we’re shouting… for our equal share. We helped build the nation. We came over as free labour. We were not only the workforce, but we were the currency! A black person cost as much as the cost of a Cadillac today! We were currency. We were traded on Wall Street. We don’t have much to show for it, except disproportionate education, disproportionate healthcare, disproportionate medicine, representation… these things hurt us, and they set us back generations.”
However he said that his aim was to remove the need for Black and Brown people to have to ask others for their fair share. “My whole thing is, you don’t have to ask when you have your own. So we created Black Ambition to foster Black and Brown ideas, and have mentorship, you know – scaffolding around the businesses, to teach them how to build their businesses, build their startups.”
Pharrell explained: “Oftentimes, like you know, you’re always trying to get… you’re vying for a seat at the table. Our whole philosophy is, ‘if you build your own table, you can invite whoever you want there, right?’ So it’s just time for entrepreneurship, and it’s time for, you know, startups and great ideas that are Black and Brown to just have their fair share.
“We’re not asking for equality. We are going to plan and build for equity. Our own. Build your own table, and decide who you want to be there.”
Pharrell had joined Frank Cooper, Chief Marketing Officer of Visa, to discuss the intersection between culture and commerce at Web Summit in Lisbon, where more than 70,000 people have gathered to discuss the most pressing questions around technology.
Speaking on Web Summit’s Centre Stage MEO Arena, Pharrell also spoke of his journey to success, saying that the key was imagination.
“I really wish that I had some amazing, poetic, symbolic origin story – but really what I was was a child who was filled with imagination,’ he said. “I came from a federally subsidized household, and then we moved to the modest part of the suburbs, and we couldn’t afford things like a lot of my classmates could. So I daydreamed. I used to sketch all the time when I should have been doing my schoolwork. And I also thought about the things I really wanted that I wish I could have.”
Pharrell added that his imagination was getting him in trouble at school, “and so I never dreamt that we would ever end up, you know, having a professional career in music or anything like that. I just knew that I loved music so much.”
He recalled spending time after school with his friend Chad Hugo making music on cheap keyboards, saying: “We just never looked back, and we just did it so much.” But he also recalled the lucky break that helped make his career – when a major record producer moved into the neighbourhood of Virginia Beach.
“There was no music industry there” he said. “And all of a sudden, this big producer who had done Michael Jackson and a few other really big artists – Teddy Riley – he pops up and parks his studio, ironically, next door to my high school: not five years after I was there, or five years before I was there… right when I got there! So it was this weird thing. So we have this talent show, and that’s how we got discovered.”
However, Pharrell also cautioned that for all his success, making money was never his ambition – and he feels it shouldn’t be for others either. “in my country, we are raised to think about how to make the most money, because our parents thought that way, and they had this like, false sense of, like, what the American Dream is or should be. The American dream is not about making the most money. In fact, the human dream and the consumer’s dream shouldn’t be about making the most money: it should be about spending the most time doing something that you love.”
He added that having a dream job doing what you love should be the aspiration for future generations: “To me, that is what we should be telling our children: that is the way that we should be leading our society – for people to do what they love! Because then you’re not on a Monday afternoon, you’re not going, ‘Oh man, it’s just 1pm – I got like, five more hours to go’, you know? Yeah, instead, you’re the first one that shows up to work. And on Friday, around 10pm everyone’s like, ‘are you ready to go? Let’s go’. And you’re like, ‘No, no, no, I just need five more minutes’. Yeah, that’s a dream job. That’s what we should be talking about as a society.”
The discussion was one of hundreds at this year’s sold-out Web Summit. As well as 70,000 attendees, Web Summit 2024 is welcoming an unprecedented 3,000 startups – the largest startup turnout in Web Summit’s history. Among these startups, over 1,000 are founded by women. These startups will join more than 70,000 attendees, 1,000 investors and 2,000 media.
For any questions about this or any other Web Summit Lisbon content, please contact Sebastian Hamilton, Head of Public Affairs, at summaries@websummit.com
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