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ON CLIPSE'S new "Hot Damn Remix," Pharrell Williams boasts: "I hand out styles like ice cream cones."

In fact, Williams and Chad Hugo, his longtime partner in the prolific producing-songwriting team known as the Neptunes, are a virtual Baskin-Robbins of pop music, producing acts on their own upstart Star Trak label (including Clipse) and adding their distinct flava to a dozen Top 10 hits -- and dozens of hip-hop hits -- in the last few years. The latter service, for which they are rumored to charge up to $150,000 per track, seems to be worth it. This year alone, the Neptunes have produced such radio staples as Nelly's "Hot in Herre," Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You" and No Doubt's "Hella Good," and their overall radio presence makes it seem like they're in a secret partnership with Clear Channel.

It's also a sound -- skittish digital funk built on tight arrangements and stripped-down beats -- that's become so ubiquitous that Beyonce Knowles left several Neptunes-produced tracks off her multi-platinum solo debut.

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Until recently, Williams and Hugo seemed more interested in staying behind the mixing board than approaching the mic, and that still holds true for Hugo, the more studiocentric Neptuner. Williams, however, started venturing out of the control room, adding old-school, Curtis Mayfield-style falsetto vocal hooks to a number of Neptunes productions, including Britney Spears's "Boys," Busta Rhymes's "Pass the Courvoisier" and Jay-Z's "Excuse Me Miss."

Now, with a little payback help from Jay-Z, Williams has stepped to the front with "Frontin,'" which recently went to No. 1 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip Hop Singles and Tracks chart. It's the first single from "The Neptunes Present . . . Clones," a star-studded compilation featuring 17 new tracks and remixes produced with past and present collaborators. It's the first time the Neptunes have headlined a studio project as producers, though their alter ego, the rock/hip-hop band known as N.E.R.D, released the acclaimed "In Search of . . ." two years ago. It's N.E.R.D. that's now touring as headliners on the Sprite Liquid Mix tour, but it's the Neptunes who are likely to have the No. 1 album when the tour comes to Merriweather Post Pavilion Sunday.

Williams doesn't have the strongest voice or the purest falsetto, but his vocals are engagingly vulnerable on "Frontin' " as he confesses over a typically terse funk track that "I know that I'm carrying on / Never mind if I'm showing off / I was just frontin' / You know I want you, baby / I'm ready to bet it all / Unless you don't care at all . . . "

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Turns out Williams does care: After betting it all, he's gratified that the track went to No. 1 and that its attendant video, shot in Rio de Janeiro, has become an instant staple on MTV and VH1.

"It's special, 100 percent," Williams says, adding, "It's an incredible feeling because I don't see myself as a singer. I just try to express myself."

Williams is the more outgoing half of the Neptunes, but it's only been in the last couple of years that he's developed his wacky wildman/sensitive Romeo stage persona. Performing in public was never high on any agenda.

"Not at all," he says. "I don't really believe in myself like that. I believe in myself as a musician, as a beatmaker, as a producer, not necessarily as an artist."

Still, when Interview magazine came calling recently, it was Michael Jackson interviewing Pharrell Williams.

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"It's all uphill; you can only go up from there," Williams suggests, apparently a little disoriented by the experience.

So, given this out-of-the-box success and his growing visibility (he performs on nine of the new album's tracks), is there a solo album and a solo career in the works?

"No," says Williams firmly. "I need several outlets to express myself. It's like saying all you can do is eat one meal for a whole year straight. You need diversity."

For proof, look to "Clones," which captures a wide range of familiar-yet-experimental sounds from rappers Noreaga (whose 1998 hit "Superthug" literally introduced the production team via namechecking lyrics), Busta Rhymes, Nelly, Snoop Dogg, Ludacris and Dirt McGirt (the Artist Formerly Known as Ol' Dirty Bastard); R&B singer Kelis revisits "Popular Thug" with fiance Nas; dancehall vet Super Cat, the latest to sign to the Star Trak label; and other Star Trak acts Fam-Lay, Vanessa Marquez, Rosco P. Goldchain, punk rockers the High Speed Scene and Spymob, the Minneapolis funk-rock band that backs Williams and Hugo in N.E.R.D

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"As far as Star Trak is concerned, we just try to make good music and sign what we thought was important, what we felt was relevant to the world and what would mean the most and still be different and original," Williams says.

It's the same approach that's made the Neptunes producers of choice for a wide array of artists, from teen-poppers looking for urban credibility (they wrote and produced half of Timberlake's "Justified" album as well as his old group 'N Sync's "Boyfriend," and old girlfriend Spears's "I'm a Slave 4 U") to hardcore rappers looking for mainstream audiences (Mystikal's "Shake Ya Ass," Snoop Dogg's "Beautiful," the latter's first love song to something other than drugs and alcohol). Even venerable rock 'n' roll institutions look their way: the Rolling Stones enlisted the Neptunes (along with Fatboy Slim and Full Phatt) to remix their classic "Sympathy for the Devil." Williams is now starring in a video set to the Neptunes' remix. "No one wants to see the same movie everyday," Williams says. "We take pride in trying to go different directions."

Williams and Hugo are Virginia Beach natives who first met as seventh graders at a school for gifted children. Appropriately, they met at band practice, where Williams was a drummer, Hugo "first-chair tenor sax." The Neptunes was an actual band at the time, as was Surrounded by Idiots, which included Tim Mosley; as Timbaland, he's one of the Neptunes' few competitors for uber-producer honors, along with yet another Virginia Beach native, Missy Elliott.

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When new jack swing avatar Teddy Riley spotted the Neptunes at a 1992 talent show, he gave them work at his just-opened Future Recording Studios -- right next to Williams's and Hugo's high school. After apprenticing on albums by Blackstreet and SWV, the Neptunes' breakthrough began via tracks with New York rappers Mase, Harlem World and M.C. Lyte, and the doors swung wide open with Noreaga's "Superthug." Since then, it's been a gold and platinum flood from the hyper-industrious production duo.

Two years ago, Williams and Hugo decided to step out from behind the curtain, recording "In Search of . . ." under the name N.E.R.D. (an acronym for "No One Ever Really Dies," it also features Virginia Beach schoolmate-rapper Shay). The album melded R&B, hip-hop, funk, rock, folk and pop sounds, and Williams and Hugo enjoyed it so much, they recorded it twice, once with a sampled soul sheen, the second with a live rock edge provided by Spymob. The album took home the Shortlist Music Prize for Artistic Achievement in Music; this year the Neptunes, along with Stefani, Mos Def, Tom Waits and Tori Amos, are on the Shortlist panel that is nominating acts for the award.

The distinction between outfits? Williams has explained it as "Neptunes is what we do and N.E.R.D. is what we are," and even as they tour behind a Neptunes album that features a N.E.R.D. track, "Loser," Williams and Hugo are working on N.E.R.D.'s follow-up album, "Fly or Die." It's why Hugo is staying in Virginia Beach, where Star Trak is headquartered, rather than touring.

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"It's almost done, but it will likely be out next year," Williams says. The album was originally scheduled for November, but, says Williams cryptically, "it has more of a first-quarter feeling. But I can't really get into it just because it's so top-secret stuff." Rumors are already circulating about a "Yellow Submarine"-like animated cartoon accompanying the album, but Williams ducks the question. He does confirm that this time around, he and Hugo will be doing most of the playing, Hugo on bass and guitar, Williams on keyboards and drums. Williams is similarly tight-lipped regarding details about future production projects, even finished but not yet released albums by Kelis and Clipse. There are also projects with Jay-Z, Papa Roach, Sugar Ray, Blink 182, Kylie Minogue and Foxy Brown.

How about Limp Bizkit, with whom the Neptunes did two "Asian-influenced" songs? "Fred [Durst] has the tracks."

Spears, whose fourth album is due in late fall? "I'm not sure about that one, although she is an amazing, amazing talent."

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Rakim? "I would love to."

And Usher, for whom they produced the triple-platinum singles "I Don't Know" and "You Don't Have to Call?"

"We're doing some tracks," Williams reports cautiously. "We're not going to do the whole album, but the songs we're doing are going to be dope, man."

But of course.

N.E.R.D. -- Appearing Sunday at Merriweather Post Pavilion with the Roots, O.A.R., Talib Kweli, Robert Randolph & the Family Band and Skillz, and second-stage acts Slightly Stoopid, Jessy Moss, High Speed Scene, Spymob and Borialis. * To hear a free Sound Bite from N.E.R.D., call Post-Haste at 202-334-9000 and press 8121. (Prince William residents, call 703-690-4110.)

N.E.R.D. (from left, Pharrell Williams, Shay and Chad Hugo) is the onstage persona of the Neptunes.

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