I knew as far back as January what summer 2016 was going to sound like. It would be a mix of hip-hop and R&B, of silky vocals and skilled wordplay that would make me laugh and maybe – as summer can do – make me cry. In short, I knew I would be listening to Malibu, the second album by Anderson .Paak.
A singer, songwriter and producer, .Paak says the dot before his last name is a symbol of his promise to “always be paying attention to detail”. The half-Korean, half-African American 30-year-old fudges his own age on Without You, artfully coughing over the end of “twentysomething”. To be honest, every song on .Paak’s album is standout: the euphoric joy of Come Down, the warm intimacy of Room In Here, the bittersweet survival of Celebrate, in which he sings urgently: “It would be a bad look talkin’ ’bout what could have been, so let’s celebrate while we still can.” He is brash and bold one minute, vulnerable and introspective the next; he moulds his voice – raspy but simultaneously smooth – to fit the lyric. He had a handful of albums as Breezy Lovejoy, but broke through under his name after joining Dr Dre in the studio – he has six songs on Dre’s 2015 album, Compton.
Importantly, .Paak never sounds fully broken, despite the themes in his music: depression, addiction, the impermanence of wealth et al. His guttural grunt sounds like James Brown reincarnated, punctuating sentences like atmospheric full stops. And every time he triumphantly sings, “Yes, lawd!” it makes me want to go to church (which is where he learned to drum). In a year of great releases, .Paak manages to sound like a perfect remix of the past – but also like the future.
.jpg?w=600)
