NERD are back

One thing most young music fans who listen to the latest music experience is older people telling them it was much better in their day. Then they reach their mid 20s and find they are the ones telling the younger fan it was better in their day, even though it was only yesterday so to speak. Then both the music fan and the music gets older to the point where the music really is old and the youngsters have no living memory of the music.

That's the point I've got to, but when I was younger the older people would say "in my day we had the Beatles and the Rolling Stones" etc and such bands were finished, or still going but only seemingly for the older crowd. Nowadays I can say in my day we had Pharrell Williams, but he's still around now and making music for the kids alongside pop singers after my time such as Katy Perry which I find dreadful.

However, it wasn't really Pharrell Williams as such that I was listening to back in the day, it was NERD and Neptune's produced music which featured him.

I bought the first NERD album at the time and thought it was amazing. There was also something about Neptune's produced music which made me want to listen to tunes by people I wouldn't normally listen to. Take N Syncs final hit "Girlfriend" for example, I never thought there would be an N Sync song that I'd like but there was, and I put it down to the Neptune's production. Likewise I loved Justin Timberlake's early solo material which was mostly Neptune's produced.

The quality of Pharrells music in recent years though has suggested to me that perhaps Chad Hugo was the talented one. But now NERD have returned with a new tune called "Lemon" the burning question is are they still as good as they were or are they more like Pharrells modern music?

Well they haven't got off to the best start because the comeback record features Rihanna, someone who I've never been able to tolerate. Saying that, I did like the Eminem tunes she featured on so there's still a chance.

The intro is not bad, I quite like the minimalistic sound they have gone for. Around 30 seconds in we find Rihanna rapping. As predicted her rapping is pretty awful but I guess it's no worse than her singing. There comes a point where I'm wondering whether this is supposed to be a NERD tune or a Rihanna tune produced by the Neptune's. She does eventually shut up and it's back to NERD to rap the rest of the tune.

So what do I think? Well it's certainly better than modern Pharrell material. I do quite like the beats, but Rihanna's presence on it does somewhat ruin it. So I would simply say it's ok, nothing special. Would it be better without Rihanna on it? Of course, taking Rihanna off any record would improve it, but even then it's nowhere near as good as their older material.

It's early days and it may still grow on me. I've accepted that Pharrell as a solo act these days is not my cup of tea, but that's a bit like a Beatles fan not liking Wings or a Jam fan not liking the Style Council, in some ways you don't expect them to. But if the Jam were to reunite and make music that sounds like the Style Council, the Jam fans wouldn't be happy.

Maybe it's the presence of Rihanna on the track that makes me fear this is more NERD does Pharrell than NERD does NERD. Guess we'll have to see what else they give us in the foreseeable future.