In Neptunes productions, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo juice pop and hip-hop with nickel-plated hooks, but with N.E.R.D, the Virginia Beach natives go further, adding drummer Shae Haley and his often martial funk. Drawing mostly from their two Virgin albums, this set compiles hits, B sides and remixes for a demonstration of genre shakes, sonic spectacle and fun. On "Baby Doll" and "She Wants to Move," N.E.R.D are tuneful and carnal, rhythmic and painterly; on tricky jams like "Lapdance" and "Truth or Dare," they table conventional lyrics and song behavior for fierce aural theater. In the N.E.R.D lab, Williams and crew seize pop, smash it, then let their imaginations roam.

Listen to "She Wants to Move":

Gallery: Random Notes, Rock's Hottest Photos

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”