Pharrell Williams Champions Hillary Clinton For President

Jason Scott
March 25, 2014

Pop music's hottest producer Pharrell Williams is oddly feminist. In his upcoming GQ April cover story, the mogul opens up about his political views, namely that Hillary Clinton is poised to usurp Barack Obama in the next election.

"We're about to have a female president. Hillary's gonna win," he tells the magazine within its pages, as the topic of conversation heads to Obama.

He quickly explains his thoughts in further detail, "Everywhere you go in this country, you have red and blue. You got the Democrats; you got the Republicans. You got the Bloods; you got the Crips. Everything is red and blue in this country. You know what else is red and blue? Blood. Blood is blue in your body until air hits it, and then it turns red. That means there's unity."

"There's gonna be unity. So when you think about a night where there's late-night talk-show hosts and it's mostly women, that's a different world. Right? A world where seventy-five percent of the prime ministers and the presidents were women: That's a different world," he says. "That's gonna happen, and it's gonna happen when Hillary wins. Because you know what? No matter how staunch of a supporter you are of no-abortion, whatever you are: You're a woman, and there's no way in the world you're going to vote for somebody that's going to try to tell you what to do with your body."

"When we are a country and we are a species that has had a martian Rover traveling up and down the crevices of this planet looking for water and ice, okay, and we've had a space station that's been orbiting our planet for sixteen years—but we still got legislation trying to tell women what to do with their bodies? Hillary's gonna win. Listen, I'm reaching out to her right now. She's gonna win."

Is he really reaching out to her? Well, he says, "I can't say but so much, but Hillary's gonna win. Trust me. And it's a two-for-one: Bill is the coolest dude in the game, still plays saxophone, and every woman in the world wants him. It's a two-for-one. Hillary's gonna win. Everybody laughed at me when I said Obama was going to win, but I knew what he represented. But I know what Hillary represents: She represents a woman in power, and she did great as the Secretary of State. She's gonna win."

In case you missed the memo, Williams is banking on Clinton to win.

With Williams' recently released G I R L record, the singer stirred up a bit of non-controversy by not including enough black woman on the cover. To that he says, "It's insecurity. If you love who you are—and I'm not saying that there's not a plight out there for people who have different skin colors, because Mexicans go through just as much discrimination, if not more discrimination, than black people do in this country. Right? That's why I wrote 'Marilyn Monroe,' man: That which makes you different is what makes you special."

He adds, "You don't gotta be waif, white, and thin to be beautiful. You can be anything that you want to be, and what I chose to do is put my friends on the cover. The girl that was closest next to me is black, but they didn't know that, so they jumped the gun. And it wasn't all black women. There were a lot of black women that were really angry at some of those girls, but some of those girls are the ones that instantly get mad when they don't see somebody that's dark. And it's like: 'Yo, you don't need nobody to represent you. You represent you. You represent the best version of who you could be. You go out there and change the world.'"

"Because I'm black, and I wouldn't trade my skin color for nothing. But I don't need to keep wearing a badge that tells you that I'm black every time I do something!" he blasts. "I'm black! In fact, the media will tell you I'm the first black person that's had a number-one record in America in a year since Rihanna's 'Diamonds' in 2012—the first black person! The media tells you that. So why do I need to roll around with a scarlet letter on my forehead that says 'Black'? My mother's black, who's a big part of my business; a black woman runs my business; and I'm married to a black woman. What more do you want? And why are we talking about this? And if we're going to talk about degrees of black—what is it in this country? I still believe that if you are at least 1/32nd of black blood in your body, even if you look like you, you are deemed black. Right?"

"So why are we still having this conversation?"

The new record follows 2006's In My Mind, and he compares his style then to now. "[That record] was just purpose-oriented toward, like, competing and being like my peers—the Jays and the Puffs of the world, who make great music," Williams says, "but their purposes and their intentions are just completely different than what I have discovered in myself that I wanted to achieve in this one. So it makes it easier to sing about, because I don't gotta sing about myself. Jay's good at that. He's great at it. I began to sound so self-serving and so self-satisfied, whereas he can do it and make you feel inspirational about who he is and what his intention is."

Check out the full interview over at GQ.