Pharrell Williams covers the April issue of GQ, and my God… this interview is a doozy. I covered some Pharrell interviews just before the Oscars, and I found him to be an interesting, peaceful sort of dude who seemed to not care for the drama, any drama. But maybe that was just part of his Oscar campaign for “Happy”. Now that he’s lost (to Adele Dazeem and that sucky song from Frozen), Pharrell is showing a different side. A political side. A side that’s sort of a sore loser too. You can read his full GQ piece here. Some highlights:

On the Oscar snub: “Well, trust me: when they read the results, my face was…frozen. But then I thought about it, and I just decided just to…let it go.”

On the criticism that he’s not promoting black women: “I’m black, and I wouldn’t trade my skin color for nothing. But I don’t need to keep wearing a badge that tells you that I’m black every time I do something! I’m black! My mother’s black, who’s a big part of my business; a black woman runs my business; and I’m married to a black woman. What more do you want? It doesn’t make sense to me. That kind of divisiveness is not necessary at a time when we’re supposed to be unifying. That’s what happiness is all about, and if you look at my ‘Happy’ video, I had everybody in there: fat, skinny, gay, straight, purple, polka-dot, plaid, gingham print, houndstooth, alien. I f–kin’ had dogs in there! I had children in there! I had kids in there! I’m the most indiscriminate person that there is! I believe in equality. Black ain’t a color: black is a spirit, and it is ubiquitous. In fact, there’s more black out in space than there is stars. We have nothing to be insecure about.”

On Hilary Clinton being the next president: “Let me tell you why Hillary’s going to win. Everywhere you go in this country, you have red and blue. You got the Democrats; you got the Republicans. You got the Bloods; you got the Crips. You know what else is red and blue? Blood. Blood is blue in your body until air hits it, and then it turns red. That means there’s unity. There’s gonna be unity. So when you think about a night where there’s late-night talk-show hosts and it’s mostly women, that’s a different world. Right? A world where 75 percent of the prime ministers and the presidents were women: that’s a different world. That’s gonna happen, and it’s gonna happen when Hillary wins. Because you know what? No matter how staunch of a supporter you are of no-abortion, whatever you are: you’re a woman, and there’s no way in the world you’re going to vote for somebody that’s going to try to tell you what to do with your body. Hillary’s gonna win. Listen, I’m reaching out to her right now. She’s gonna win.”

On the Tea Party: “The Tea Party guys? The guys with the n***er jokes in 2014? They’re all trying to learn how to do the Dougie. Please. While their daughters are all twerking. Trust me: Miley tells me all the time. Not saying that about Billy Ray, but I’m saying Miley tells me all the time: all those little girls, all those girls with their Republican daddies, they’re twerkin’ somewhere listening to Jay Z and Beyoncé and doin’ the ‘Happy’ dance. And that’s black.”

On being misunderstood: “I’m not a renaissance man. What I am is a maverick, and I don’t want to be put in a box at all.”

On his infamous buffalo hat: “Anything different, people are going to look at and go, ‘Ha ha ha ha, what is that??’ Then, after a while, they do a little bit of research; they realize it’s Vivienne Westwood, an ode to her boyfriend at the time; they had a store together called World’s End. The guy who went on to sign the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren.”

On if he regrets the trucker hat: “No. Uh-uh. I always did the same thing. I’ve dressed like I make my music. With the trucker hat, it was just a different time. And it was just N.E.R.D. time for me, you know? And that’s what we represented—like, the anti-media image. We represented the real: black kids that skated.”

[From GQ]

He went on for a while about being black and how he loves black women, but I edited some of it because it was so wordy. The crux was that Pharrell had been criticized for the cover of GIRLS because there were three light-skinned women featured and seemingly no black women. But Pharrell says one of the women is black, so there.

As for Pharrell’s reaction to losing the Oscar… well, I was rooting for him, and I was disappointed that “Let It Go” won (seriously, that song is not good). But it’s one thing for a critic or a blogger to say “Wow, Pharrell should have won” rather than Pharrell saying it himself. It feels like… I don’t know, he might need to check his ego.

Incidentally, I kind of love that he’s such a huge Hillary supporter. You guys know I’m pretty liberal, but I’m ambivalent on Hillary’s would-be presidential run in 2016. But I think it’s nice that Pharrell is so pro-Hillary.

Photos courtesy of Paola Kudacki / GQ.