Pharrell has shouted out Slick Rick during his inaugural Joopiter Auction sale, and said he wouldn’t be where he was without the rapper’s influence.
In a video posted to his Instagram, Pharrell stood alongside Rick the Ruler and called himself a “crumb” compared to the Hip Hop royalty standing beside him.
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“The reason why there is even an exhibition is because of Rick the Ruler,” Pharrell said. “I’m a crumb! I will always be a crumb to this guy right here. I learned what a Gucci link was because of this guy right here. I learned what a Cuban was because of this guy right here.”
He continued, “This is the king, king, king. He would not have several photos with a king’s crown on. The king! This is my brother David, my brother Bill, us driving around in Norfolk in Virginia Beach in my brother’s car, listening to the first Slick Rick album Children’s Story…over and over again, over and over again.”
Pharrell also posed for a photo alongside Rick and another big fan, Tyler, The Creator.
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Pharrell isn’t the only chart-topping artist to give Slick Rick his flowers recently. Nicki Minaj did so back in March, revealing that Rick’s 1988 track “Mona Lisa,” from his seminal album The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, was the first rap song she ever learned growing up.
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“Slicker than the guy w|da thing on his eye,” she wrote, referencing her Slick Rick bar on “Super Bass.” “If you only knew how much I love you. the 1st rap I ever learned was #MonaLisa. 1 day I rapped it to my mthr & when I got to the part about ‘a virgin?’ My mthr looked @ me like I lost my damn mind. I didn’t know what that meant.”
The Neptunes hit-maker first announced the launch of Joopiter in September, dubbing his first collection of items the “Son of a Pharoah” capsule. The set went on sale on Tuesday (October 11), and Pharrell had previously told the Financial Times that Joopiter was created to be an auction site that carries everything.
“Spiritually it’s a very rich experience, an enlightening experience to let…stories go,” Pharrell added.
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Joopiter is just the latest business venture Pharrell has announced this year. Earlier in September, he announced he’s currently in the midst of starting a new creative advocacy agency called Mighty Dream that will foster ideas to create products that help marginalized communities.
“If someone asks me what inspires me, I always say, ‘That which is missing,’” Williams told the outlet. “It’s the clearest path to being additive to society and finding new solutions for real problems. Mighty Dream aims to create what’s missing: in creativity, in advocacy, in society.”
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The Grammy-award-winning producer will serve as co-chair and founder of the new entity.
“It is probably the most important thing I’ve done in my 30-something-year career,” Lisa Osborne Ross, CEO of Edelman U.S., told Adweek. “As a woman and as a woman of color in my role and in this industry, it’s my very firm belief that businesses have not only the opportunity but also the responsibility to drive change.”
