Two megaproducers sat together in a serene environment to have a detailed conversation about their music-making process. Pharrell and Rick Rubin are responsible for crafting dozens of chart-topping tracks that have gone down in history as some of the greatest songs to hit airwaves, but a few comments made by Pharrell during their conversation last month may have landed him in legal trouble once again.
In 2018, a jury awarded Marvin Gaye's estate $5 million after they ruled that Pharrell and Robin Thicke plagiarized the iconic soul singer's classic track "Got to Give it Up" when they made "Blurred Lines." Pharrell expressed that he was disheartened with the judgment because he asserted he would never steal from anyone.
"It's very technical what you've done," Rubin chimed in and said "Blurred Lines" is nothing like "Got to Give it Up." Pharrell agreed and added, "But the feeling was." Pharrell also said that he often "reverse engineers" an original song to create his own, mentioning that he did just that with "Blurred Lines."
That exchange with Rubin didn't go unnoticed by Gaye's family who has now accused Pharrell of perjury and fraud because in court he said: “I did not go in the studio with the intention of making anything feel like, or to sound like, Marvin Gaye.” In documents obtained by Variety, Gaye's estate names the interview with Rubin as proof that Pharrell was less than truthful.
“Williams made intentional, material misrepresentations to the jury and this Court as part of an unconscionable scheme to improperly influence the jury and the Court in their decisions,” the documents state, according to Variety. “Nothing was more central to this case than whether ‘Got to [Give It Up]’ or Marvin Gaye was on Williams’s mind while he was engaged in creating ‘Blurred [Lines].’ That fact was central to the issue of whether Williams and Thicke illegally copied ‘Got To’ and whether their copying was willful, and they knew it."
The family is asking the court to rule in their favor and have Pharrell be responsible for their $3.5 million in attorney fees.
