Pharrell Williams rupatteli Huffington Postille tuottamistaan biiseistä, ja esiin nousi myös tietenkin I’m A Slave 4 U vuodelta 2001. Yhteistyö järjestyi Britneyn silloisen poikaystävän Justin Timberlaken avulla, joka esitteli Pharrellin Britneylle. Toinen Pharrellin mainitsema kappale on Boys.
Thanks to knowing Jay Z, Pharrell met Justin Timberlake. Thanks to Timberlake being a great boyfriend, Pharrell met Britney Spears, and “I’m a Slave 4 U” was born. “Jay Z introduced me to him (at a club) in New York. He was there with a couple guys from N’Sync and Jay was like, ‘You have to meet this guy Justin Timberlake from N’Sync.’ I was like, ‘Oh, OK, cool.’ Jay was like, ‘Y’all need to work together.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah. Sure.’ So we met up and we did ‘Girlfriend’ and funny thing is the song’s called ‘Girlfriend’ and Justin’s like, ‘I want you to work with my girl’ and I was like, ‘All right, cool,'” Pharrell explained. “So he set it up and we did like two songs. You know, we thought it was interesting, but I remember people going, ‘Oh you shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t work with people in pop.’ And I was like, ‘Man, we have to have way more vision than that and we have to be open to … other types of creativity and what that may bring… If you’re just closed-minded and you think categorical all the time, then you’re going to be a categorical producer and I didn’t want to do that.”
