In any major city in the world, there are certain hotels where the cool kids stay. The hip set, young actors, musicians, artists. The lobby of The Four Seasons in midtown Manhattan, though, makes it clear that this isn't one of those hotels. It's nice, sure--obsequious concierge, famously expensive rooms--but it's a different kind of nice. It's Botox and inheritance nice. Vague European accent and air-kisses nice. "Hey, that's the wife on Everybody Loves Raymond!" nice.

Hold up, though. Wait a minute. Because the other kind of nice just stepped out from the elevator bay. Sauntered, really. Slow enough that, if gauging his velocity and the distracted look on his face, you might think the world was swirling around him at double speed. But that's Pharrell Williams for you. Dude moves at his own pace, and things are just gonna have to adapt to him.

Take, for instance, the black and pink silk Louis Vuitton handkerchief knotted around his neck, making him look like a flamboyant Jesse James relaxing after a hard day robbing trains. Or his chain: cartoonishly oversized links, each a different color diamond--blue, yellow, pink, white; a charm featuring a cartoon version of himself with his N.E.R.D.-mates Chad and Shay, and his dog, Dookey. You don't know whether he got it at Jacob's or Toys 'R Us.

But we've known for a minute now Pharrell marches to the beat of his own synth-accompanied drum. From the earliest Neptunes productions, he's been developing a curious, falsetto croon that straddles the line between parody and genius. He and partner Chad Hugo have been flirting with styles, blurring the boundaries between musical genres, establishing themselves as the go-to hit factory forÉ has it really been eight years since "Superthug?"

They came up under new jack swing king Teddy Riley, but the Neptunes' success started with rap. Nore's smash, Mystikal's "Shake Ya Ass," ODB's "Got Your Money." They passed us the Clipse and the Courveoisier and made it "Hot in Herre" for Nelly. Jigga and Snoop have been steady beneficiaries of 'Tunes tunes, with Snoop going so far as to put out 2004's R&G: The Masterpiece on their Star Trak label. As their profile rose steadily through the first half of this decade, though, they proved themselves way beyond generic categorization. (N.E.R.D. is a rock band, really. Or is it funk?) And the likes of Britney ("Slave 4 U") Justin Timberlake ("Like I Love You") and Gwen Stefani ("Holla Back Girl") have sought, and been granted, their platinum touch. Through it all, Pharrell's been the visible one, the cocky extrovert to Chad's quiet family man. Somehow, though, even though he teased people with "Frontin'" a few years back, he's never gone strictly for dolo. Until now.

See, he's in New York to appear on The Late Show With David Letterman, which is in turn to promote his upcoming solo debut. It seems impossible, given the rise of his celebrity over the past few years, but In My Mind is truly his first outing on his own: no Chad, no Shay, no Snoop, no Jay (well, maybe on one song). He made the beats, he played the instruments, he sang the hooks. All par for the course. But this time, he wrote all the rhymes. So it's a test: Is the world ready for Microphone P?

* * *

Walking across the lobby, he proffers a fist to bump--a dangerous proposition, given the size and edges of the Burmese sapphire he wears on his left hand. He finds a couch off in a corner, away from curious stares ("must be a rapper," the ladies who lunch whisper to each other), and he sits and talks about his album. About his production process. About his decision, after all these years of making beats with Chad and lending his voice to other folks, to finally do an album all by himself. He answers questions obligingly, but you can tell its no fun for him. He seems uncomfortable: he leans back and looks at the ceiling; he looks at his phone; he looks at--let's just say he looks around a lot.

"I just felt like I needed to do it," he says of putting In My Mind together. "Something about these songs, I kept going, Yo, I can't see nobody else doing this but me. It was almost like the music itself dictating it."

He goes on: "There's a lot of good music out there. But at the same time I felt that, you know when you're watching TV late at night, and you're about to fall asleep, everything's just a monotone? Everything is the same. There's a lot of people copying what music other people have already done, so it makes for an even sound. Just...bland. I feel like I want to wake up society, put the fire under some muthafuckas."

All of sudden, he sits up. Perks up. "You really think XXL wants to hear about the beats? I talk about that with magazines all the time." Fair enough. We cede the floor to the honorable gentleman from Virginia:

In My Mind consists of seven hip-hop tracks followed by seven R&B; in a sense, the two halves are like the hemispheres of P's brain, though not nearly as neatly divided. In keeping with P's particular brand of alchemy, sometimes the R&B sounds like hip-hop, and sometimes vice versa. It's always been his musical identity. When he channeled Rick James on Jay-Z's "Give It To Me" and whispered "just gimme that funk, that sweet, that nasty, that gushy stuff," it was wearing the clothing of the romantic, but it was gully. When he got on "Frontin'" and sweetly sang "You knew I was gon' teeeear yo' ass up," it was with an MC's cockiness. The same reversal holds true for Pharrell-as-rapper; on "You Can Do It Too," he rhymes: "I was in marching band/I was a skateboarder/Jesus made wine/I couldn't make water." Self-deprecating, modest, spiritual.

Despite points for piety, though, the album shows little of the social consciousness P speaks of in person. Why not? He answers the question with a question: "You know what a diamond is? A diamond is the culmination of so many things happenin' at once. Coal turning to carbon, the pressure the heat, crystallizing. But you look at a diamond, you don't say, ÔLook at the carbon, look at the heat.' You go, ÔWow, this is a byproduct of a lot of amazing forces.' I put a lot of beauty into my album knowing that it came from bestial conditions."

Originally, In My Mind was going to be mostly R&B. "I only intended on doin' one rap record," he says, "like Lauryn did on her album. But it just kept happenin' and happenin'. I kept on spittin' shit. Then I realized my album wasn't the proper forum for talkin' about growin' up and the shit I'd seen."

The preceding verse, for example, won't be on the album. P just spit it in the interview. So what do you with that type of material, the stuff that comes welling out of you but doesn't fit in your song sequence? If it's about the streets, save it for the streets. Give it back to the streets. In this case, P reached out to DJ Drama, architect of the Gangsta Grillz mixtape series, and decided to drop a companion mixtape, titled In My Eyes, a week or two before In My Mind's release date. "When I got that phone call, it was just a no-brainer," says DJ Drama. "I was ready to go. I been a fan of him on the mic. P comes with some shit--niggas be underestimatin' him. Me and him had this argument in the studio, because he thinks niggas are sleepin' on him or niggas don't think he's gonna come hard. I'm like, 'C'mon, man, are you crazy?'"

It remains to be seen. As hugely successful as he's been in his career, P wonders whether he'll get the respect he deserves for his mic skills. "I was crushed when y'all was trying to give me ÔTrain of Thought' for my verse on the ÔDrop It Like It's Hot' remix and missed it," he says seriously. "Niggas don't know me like that. But ask Q-Tip what I was doing when he met me. Ask Chris Lighty. Ask Lyor Cohen. Then ask yourself what you're listenin' to," he says with a sly smile, reaching back to a line from his rhyme book, "and know you won't forget me."