I’m not sure the world asked for a documentary on the rise of one-hat/one-big-hit wonder Pharrell Williams, much less one turned into a Lego animated spectacle.

But darned if it isn’t the most adorable, upbeat rendering of an Up-from-the-Projects musical biography one can imagine.

Virginia Beach native producer, musician, “beat” builder and R&B and pop star Williams is best known the world over for his smash hit “Happy.” “Piece by Piece” more or less builds towards that Biggest Break from his childhood fascination with Stevie Wonder, his grandmother finding the indifferent student’s true passion, buying him a snare drum as he repeated the seventh grade, through his first and only band — The Neptunes — and their rise to hip hop prominence while creating novel sounds for Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and No Doubt.

He’s still working with his childhood collaborators, a family man captured playing with his kid in the bathtub and apparently a very nice guy.

“How do I serve this thing called life?” he wonders, repeating the message drilled into him by the music-encouraging granny.

That relatively drama-free narrative is elevated by its conversion to Lego animation, which renders everything in bubbly images and color tones that fit the exquisitely arranged and produced music that pours out of the score.

Using animation, we can get an idea of the synesthesia that impacts how Williams experiences music. He’s literally seeing colors while the rest of us just fall into the groove or grin at the playful lyrics and quirky way of using unusual sounds — a singer saying “What what what,” Pharrell doing mouth pops and clucks — that become the rhythm track to giant hits.

The “beats” Williams and his Neptunes partner Chad Hugo cooked-up for sale to other artists, then used in their own productions, are visualized as pieced-together Lego light cubes. Some are used right away. Others stored, their lights glimmering through the plastic boxes they’re stashed in.

Jetski rides to private jet flights and flyovers by the Norfolk-based Blue Angels Naval aviation team (a regular feature of the skies over Va. Beach) are rendered into Legos.

The inspiration for that novel approach apparently came from an early conversation Williams had with Neville (“40 Feet from Stardom”). In life and music, Williams opines, there’s “nothing new.” We’re all just rearranging the Lego blocks, trying to create something magical and different.

Sure, it’s a gimmick. But it’s playful, it works and suits this material to a T.

As our biography subject got his biggest break writing and singing a worldwide smash hit slapped onto the soundtrack of “Despicable Me 2,” it’s hard to imagine any other way of telling the life story of this much-more-than-one-hat-and-one-hit wonder.

Rating: As PG as any movie with Snoop Dogg in it gets.

Cast: The voices of Pharrell Williams, Morgan Neville, Snoop Dogg, N.O.R.E., Gwen Stefani, Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake and Kendrick Lamar.

Credits: Directed by Morgan Neville, scripted by Morgan Neville, Oscar Vazquez, Aaron Wickendon and Jason Zeldes. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:33