walking upstream…
Anderson .Paak
photo: john sears · cc by-sa 4.0 ↗Anderson .Paak
Anderson .Paak (Brandon Paak Anderson) grew up drumming at his family's Oxnard, California church before building a genre-blurring catalog that fuses hip-hop, funk, soul and G-funk with his own live-band musicianship. He broke through as a singer, rapper and drummer with Venice (2014) and Malibu (2016), then deepened his ties to West Coast hip-hop as a protégé of Dr. Dre on Oxnard (2018) before winning Grammys both solo (Ventura, Bubblin) and as one half of Silk Sonic with Bruno Mars. His sound is a walking argument that the drummer's chair and the frontman's mic can belong to the same person.
the sound in question
2016
Come DownAnderson .Paak
walk the tributaries ↓
J Dilla2000s · Hip hop / Instrumental hip hop / Neo soul / Jazz rap
.Paak has said he came to Dilla late but then couldn't listen to anything else, and it reshaped how loose and 'wrong-feeling' he'd let his own pocket get — the lurching, unquantized drum feel that defines Dilla's beat tapes turns up in .Paak's own drumming and in the hazy, sample-warm production he and Knxwledge built as NxWorries.
listen: upstream & heresource: Okayplayer ↗
2006
Won't DoJ Dilla
2016
SidepieceAnderson .Paak
listen forCue Dilla's 'Won't Do' — woozy, half-sung, the beat dragging just behind the vocal — then play NxWorries' 'Sidepiece', where .Paak sings a line straight out of 'Won't Do' as a direct homage. Once you catch the reference, the whole NxWorries record starts to sound like a conversation with Dilla's ghost.
D'Angelo2000s · Neo-Soul / R&B / Funk
.Paak has repeatedly named D'Angelo among his defining influences, and critics hear it too: reviewers described Malibu as updating the 'muted grooves' of Soulquarians-era landmarks like Voodoo, with .Paak and his band the Free Nationals digging into that same 'chicken grease' funk pocket — behind-the-beat guitar, murky low end, a vocal that slides instead of snapping to the grid.
listen: upstream & here
2000
Chicken GreaseD'Angelo
2016
Silicon ValleyAnderson .Paak
listen forDrop the needle on D'Angelo's 'Chicken Grease' — all lurching, unhurried funk and mumbled falsetto — then go to .Paak's 'Silicon Valley', a Malibu ballad reviewers singled out as sounding like a lost cut from a Voodoo session. Listen for how both let the groove stay loose and unresolved instead of locking down.
Dr. Dre1990s · West Coast hip-hop / G-funk / Gangsta rap
Dre heard .Paak's 'Suede' off his self-released Venice, brought him in to sing on six tracks of Compton (2015), then signed him to Aftermath and executive-produced Oxnard (2018) — an album .Paak has said was made 'under the tutelage' of Dre and that leans hard into early-'90s G-funk, the sound Dre invented.
listen: upstream & heresource: Hip Hop Hero ↗
1992
Nuthin' but a 'G' ThangDr. Dre
2018
TintsAnderson .Paak
listen forPlay Dre's 'Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang' — the whining synth lead, the unhurried West Coast bounce — then put on .Paak's 'Tints' with Kendrick Lamar, an Oxnard single soaked in that same G-funk lean-back groove but filtered through .Paak's live-band, singing-drummer energy.