Seeing Sounds - Concept

Concept

While touring in promotion of their previous album, Fly or Die, N.E.R.D ended their contract with Virgin Records in 2005. After touring, Pharrell Williams felt that the album was too consistent; he felt the band abandoned a sense of unpredictability. The band became "hooked" on the energy from their fans and began recording their third album. Williams and fellow band member Chad Hugo later established Star Trak Entertainment, a subsidiary of Interscope Records.

For the album, the band wanted to create the atmosphere of hyperactivity they knew their fans wanted. They wrote a few songs, but felt the songs "weren't strong enough" and sent them to other musicians. Shay Haley, a member of the band, explained that in their new work, the band wanted to add energy to the emotional appeal of their past albums, though the band did not conceive a clear plan for the direction of the new album. N.E.R.D described the desired outcomes of the album as "a pre-cognitive effort to make music that would make sense for us on while we're on a stage and to recapture that feeling we love so much" and additionally, "to make something that was thought provoking and for people to listen to it and enjoy it on their own time".

Originally titled N.3.R.D, the title was changed to Seeing Sounds. Williams explained that the title was based on synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon the band learned of while watching the Discovery Channel. They were inspired to create music that could be conceived as a live show. He was surprised to learn not everyone experienced while listening to music. He described synesthesia as the outcome when "one sense gets more information than what's intended", stimulated by sensory deprivation. Haley further elaborated, saying that it is a mixture of senses that causes a person to experience colorful hearing and auditory smell. When the band created the album, it was the music they envisioned and decided the appropriate title for the album, Seeing Sounds. Williams pointed out that the lyrics were also inspired by synesthesia. He said that his fans want to "rock out" and be taken on an "emotional roller coaster", and the only way to do that is to give the fans some records they could blast out on their speakers. The European-influenced music is layered and textured with many music modalities, differing from their past club-oriented albums. Hugo called the album a "big album of LSD, sonic drug". The band described the album of being an exercise in creative cohesion, band unity and a renewed purpose for themselves. Williams went on to add:

If you really analyze that, the most inspiration is probably deep inside a synesthesiac. So for us, 'seeing sounds' is what we relate to the most. We figured we'd make an album out of it. Energy and emotion was the criteria, but we made the music anticipating the show. That was the most important thing… 'Spaz' is old school, hip hop feeling with some drum and bass. It becomes a big, tall monster. It's almost like this big gorilla looking down at you. If he smacks you, he kills you. His fingers are the size of your body. That's kinda what we're doing. We're facing this big monster of, of what we know is out there, of what we see, that big monster of energy.