The view from Pharrell Williams’s penthouse makes an unequivocal statement: “I am monarch of all I survey.” Topped by a frosted-glass dome, the empyrean apartment floats 40 stories above Miami. A gargantuan great room rises the full three levels of the space, which pivots around a white spiral staircase. Bold contemporary art lines the walls, and sybaritic delights—an outdoor pool overhung with an improbable vine-covered trellis, a supersize purple crocodile Hermès bag—can be found at every turn. But the coups de théâtre are the massive window walls, which provide a breathtaking panorama over the city, across Biscayne Bay and Miami Beach, and out to the Atlantic. “Living your life 40 floors up, looking out every day on ocean and skies, you see the world from a different point of view,” Williams says. “It’s like living in a very interesting fishbowl, but since no one can see up here, it’s like a fishbowl with a limo tint.”
More than a fishbowl, Williams’s penthouse feels like the world’s most luxurious tree fort. “Kidult”—a portmanteau of “kid” and “adult”—is a term he often uses to describe himself. For the adult half of the equation, there’s his track record as a producer and performer, a series of triumphs that makes him one of the most sought-after talents in the industry. And his work beyond the music world is also undoubtedly grown-up: In the past eight years, he has put his stamp on fashion, jewelry, furniture, contemporary art, and industrial design. But it is Williams’s inner child that is most immediately apparent in his quirky-luxe apartment, where he shuffles around on this bright Miami morning in a white T-shirt, sweatpants, and bulbous yellow Mickey Mouse slippers, his solid gold BlackBerry never far out of reach. His steroidal closet is filled with a teenager’s fantasy trove of Technicolor sneakers. In the living room, a pair of Christian Liaigre armchairs is drawn up to a low video-game table offering Ms. Pac Man and Galaga. And the home theater, furnished with cushy red leather seats, has been converted into another personal arcade. “I don’t watch movies here. I mainly use it to play Mario Kart,” Williams explains. Even at age 38, he says, “I’m finding it hard to grow up.”
Childlike is one thing, childish another. Though the penthouse bears all the hallmarks of an MTV Cribs pleasure palace, ripe for louche and Lucullan delights, Williams eschews the kind of bacchanals endemic to the music business. “I only entertain very close friends,” he says. As for the caricatured rap-star ethos of Cristal, hot tubs, and hotties and homies by the score, he insists, “I don’t even understand that.”
