7 time Grammy Award winner Pharrell Williams, whose recent collaboration with French electronic duo Daft Punk has yielded the hit single Get Lucky, was spotted at the BET Awards with an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Carbon Concept watch, in addition to a grey cashmere cardigan from Chanel’s Paris-Dallas 2013/14 collection. Pharrell is a long-time wearer of Audemars Piguet’s timepieces, originally favouring the skeleton Royal Oak collection but moving onto the Concept line afterwards.

The Royal Oak Carbon Concept featured here comes in a forged carbon case 44mm wide, with a black ceramic bezel, crown and pushers. The Calibre 2895 Manufacture movement’s mainplate doubles as the watch dial here, and is made of carbon as well. For most readers who are familiar with watches, the tourbillon and power reserve indicator that dominate the left and upper sections of the dial respectively should be standard fare. What is interesting are its remaining portions. The section on the right is actually the chronograph’s elapsed minute counter, reimagined in linear form and capable of measuring up to 30 minutes. The final “subdial” at six o’clock is a crown position indicator. At N, the crown is in its neutral position. Pull the crown out a notch and the hand swings to R, indicating that manual winding can be done. Pull it out further and H is displayed for the adjustment of the watch’s hour and minutes.

Audemars Piguet is extremely popular amongst hip hop artists, with numerous rap lyrics by the likes of Wiz Khalifa and Lil Wayne referencing the brand. The brand famously partnered with rapper Jay-Z to release a limited edition watch celebrating the latter’s 10^th anniversary in the music business. Limited to just 100 pieces, the watches retailed from between US$23,500 to US$69,500 depending on the case material, and US$500,000 of the sales proceeds were donated to Jay-Z’s scholarship fund for inner-city children.