The musician and philanthropist Pharrell Williams, whose work often focuses on his hometown of Virginia Beach, VA.
On Pharrell:
Micaiah Carter
"We had to bury my cousin on my birthday,” says Pharrell Williams. So the day the music producer and impresario turned 48 years old was devoted not to his own life but to one cut short at 25, that of Donovan Lynch. “It was bittersweet,” Williams says. “The way he died was bitter. Where he is right now is sweet.”
Lynch was gunned down by the police in his and Williams’s hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia, on March 26; Williams has just returned to Miami after speaking at the funeral. “I wasn’t able to deliver the speech with the fire and intention I wanted,” he says, his voice wavering, “because I was just choked with emotion.”