*Pharrell Williams recently shared a rare family photo with wife Helen Lasichanh and their 12-year-old son Rocket Ayer.
As reported by People, Williams explained the meaning of Rocket’s name to Oprah Winfrey in 2014. “Metaphorically, it was because of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Rocket Love,’ Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man,’ and Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rocket,’ ” he said at the time. “All of my favorite musicians.”
“In the same way the Indians named their children after a force or animal or element, we named him after a man-made machine that was meant to go up, meant to ascend,” Williams added.
Williams and Lasichanh welcomed a set of triplets in January 2017.
“I’m just enjoying my family, so it’s good,” Williams told PEOPLE in 2018. “We make time. We carve out time for ourselves, but we also love it, too. We love being with the babies. It’s crazy. And all of my babies are creative — we have to protect that.”
In related news, Pharrell recently announced that he is pulling his Something in the Water music festival from his hometown of Virginia Beach following the police killing of his cousin by a local police officer earlier this year. The move comes after two years of COVID-related cancellations.
Williams fired off a letter to city manager Patrick Duhaney noting that Virginia Beach has been “run by and with toxic energy” for “far too long.”
“The toxic energy that changed the narrative several times around the homicide of my cousin, Donovon Lynch, a citizen of Virginia, is the same toxic energy that changed the narrative around the mass murder and senseless loss of life at Building Number 2,” Williams wrote in a letter, referring to the 12 people who died in a 2019 mass shooting at a local municipal building.
“Until the gatekeepers and the powers-that-be consider the citizens and the consumer base, and no longer view the idea of human rights for all as a controversial idea… I don’t have any problems with the city, but I realize the city hasn’t valued my proposed solutions, either,” he wrote.
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