Pharrell Williams and Rick Rubin, renowned music producers, discuss the evangelical church, the Spirit, and music.

I Am Free - Evangelical Pop Culture

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00:00Tell me about your relationship to the church growing up.

00:04Church was everything. That's where we first saw spirit.

00:08You know, we saw the spirit moving through people.

00:11You know, we're out here in nature right now, and as the wind blows,

00:15some of these trees with the longer branches, you can tell which way the wind is blowing

00:19based on which way the leaves are turning and which way the...

00:25and how the sections of branches are blowing in the same direction.

00:30And that's how the spirit is in church.

00:33When the spirit is really moving around in there, it's like a wave.

00:37You just see it.

00:38You know how, like, you go to a big football stadium and you see people doing a wave?

00:43Yeah.

00:44I've seen the spirit do that.

00:48Just moving around.

00:50People just throwing their hands up and screaming and shouting.

00:54And I would see that at, you know, my dad's church,

00:59which was a Pentecostal church, and then my mom's church was a Baptist church.

01:03And they didn't really, like, shout as much in there.

01:07You would hear it, but it wasn't like it wasn't a Pentecostal church.

01:09Was there music in church?

01:11Oh, yeah. It was a lot of music.

01:12And it was usually, it would begin with something very powerful that the pastor would say.

01:20You know, Elder Bishop Therogood, he would say something that would just connect with all of the congregation.

01:28But then the organist, which was a lot, most of the time was my uncle, Mongol Ezekiel.

01:34Really?

01:35Yeah.

01:36He would play along as this guy's preaching, but he's preaching in a note.

01:45Think future with auto-tune.

01:47Yeah.

01:48And as he moves, when future is rhyming, he's rhyming, and he's picking a note,

01:56and he's having these pockets that correspond with whatever the chords are in the beat.

02:02Right?

02:03Yeah.

02:04That's what they would do in church.

02:05Yeah.

02:05They would hit, you know, that A flat or A sharp, you know, that A, like, they would hit that.

02:13And then all of a sudden, as he's preaching and saying what he's saying, he's doing it with a melody.

02:20And then all of a sudden, as he's making his next point, the organist would modulate up to a half step.

02:31And it would be like, and they would continue to do it up another step, up another step.

02:36And you're just feeling this welling feeling that's in there.

02:41And man, at a certain point, it just would explode.

02:44The pressure, like a pipe, it would explode.

02:46And all of a sudden, they go to a cut-time beat.

02:50Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

02:53And then, and literally, you're seeing people shouting.

02:56And you're seeing people run up and down the aisles.

02:58And you're just seeing waves and waves of wafts of the spirit, just people just moving.

03:09And I grew up in that.

03:11Wow.

03:11And from the pastor and the organist, none of that was rehearsed.

03:16Zero.

03:17That was a moment in time.

03:20Where they just connected to the spirit.

03:21All improvisation, feeling the moment.

03:24Period.

03:25Amazing.

03:26Period.

03:26And I would even, I would even venture to say, now that you're, now that you just said

03:32what you said, I would say that was my first, that was the first time I ever encountered

03:42urgency live.

03:44If you could literally, if you could cut the air, you could cut a block of the energy

03:53out in that room.

03:55And if one could consume it, you don't understand what you would feel.

03:58Yeah.

03:59Nobody wasn't paying attention.

04:01People were.

04:02Everybody was engaged.

04:03In it.

04:04Everybody.

04:04Yeah.

04:05You could feel it.

04:06Yeah.

04:07That's amazing.

04:07You could feel it.

04:08And, but that still happens today.

04:10You know, at my uncle's church, Faith World Ministries, you know, that still happens today.

04:20I mean, when he preaches, he went from being an organist and piano player, which he still

04:25is to now being a pastor of his own, um, ministry and congregation.

04:31And you go there, you sit and you feel, it's right off of Azalea, uh, I want to say it was

04:39Azalea in Norfolk, Virginia.

04:42It was either Azalea Gardens, Azalea Boulevard.

04:44But when he speaks the word and him and the, uh, the organist there, the head organist

04:54there, uh, Larry, when they, man, what they make, the, the feeling that they're able to

05:01conjure and the way that the spirit just comes into that building, it's just, it's something

05:07else.

05:07It's a reason so much great music comes out of the church.

05:10Oh, yeah.

05:11The best musicians.

05:12Yeah.

05:12The best singers.

05:13Yes.

05:15And I think what conditions them is the spirit, access to the spirit.

05:18Yeah.

05:19And for me, to be clear, when I talked about the, all that is, all that is, all that ever

05:25was, all that ever will be, you know, the alpha and the omega, you know, the matrix itself

05:31existence, to me, the spirit is the energy of all that, everything that exists.

05:38It's the spirit.

05:39It's the, it's the kinetic side of, it's all that.

05:44What makes it happen.

05:45What makes everything happen.

05:46Creation.

05:47The energy.

05:48Yeah.

05:48It's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it

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