A Brief History of Pharrell Williams's Feminist Awakening

At the Odd Future music festival in LA, Pharrell debuted a new song he produced with Gwen Stefani and proudly announced it was a feminist anthem. (Notably, Gwen herself never used the word to describe the track, and has shied away from identifying as a feminist herself over the years.)

"I just wanna see y'all faces when it come on," he told the crowd. "It's called 'Spark the Fire' — it's about feminism."

The same month, Pharrell walked back his comments about not being a feminist. Pharrell told BuzzFeed he's a feminist "if I'm allowed to be. If feminism is a synonym for equality, then, yeah, sure."