N*E*R*D will launch its first tour in two years this month, in support of sophomore effort “Fly or Die.” The club-and-theater outing is slated to begin March 15 in Atlanta, and will run through an April 18 performance in Philadelphia. More dates are expected to be added.
N*E*R*D features the Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo accompanied by rapper Shay. The genre-hopping group bowed the disc’s first single “She Wants to Move” during last month’s Superbowl halftime show.
“Fly or Die” is the Virgin Records follow-up to “In Search Of…,” which peaked at No. 56 on The Billboard 200 in 2002 and has sold 595,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. That set was recorded with rock band Spymob in the back-up role.
In a statement, Hugo explains the decision to record without the backing band. “We’ve always played our own instruments in everything we do, but we convert them into programming for the final tracks,” he says. “For ‘Fly or Die,’ we decided to pick up the instruments and play ourselves and leave it like that. It’s more honest and people don’t know this side to us yet.”
