Anderson .Paak HHV Records 10 Items

With an eye for detail

The dot in Anderson .Paak’s name isn‘t the only unusual thing about how the Oxnard, California native presents himself: “The dot stands for detail — always be paying attention to detail.” A detail likely overlooked by most, for the aspiring rapper and singer, is a constant reminder to stay true to himself. This approach finally helped him break into the hip hop world in 2015, but his starting conditions before that point had made it anything but easy. As a teenager, he played drums in a church group, and later earned money on a marijuana plantation. When one day, out of nowhere, the plantation threw him out the door, he was suddenly homeless together with his wife and a child: out of necessity, friends hired him in a studio, where he used his free time to record his first record O.B.E. Vol. 1 under the name Breezy Lovejoy. The long player was released in 2012 on an indie label, but more than respect in the local scene did not come around. Shortly, the rapper renamed himself Anderson .Paak, and as a session drummer he even went on tour with American Idol star Haley Reinhart.

One next to Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube

He proved himself to be a thoroughly diverse artist in 2013 with the release of the EP Cover Art: conceived as a reversal of history, he used rock songs by white artists such as Neil Young, the Beatles, and the White Stripes, and transformed them into groovy R&B tracks on which he primarily sang instead of rapping. He then showed himself similarly musically diverse a year later on the first .Paak album Venice – with ingredients from the most diverse cultural recipes, the Californian mixed together a record of R&B, soul, hip hop, funk, dancefloor, and disco that brought out both the storyteller and the ambitious melody writer in him. That the long-player did not disappear into oblivion was ensured by .Paak’s features on Dr. Dre ’s hotly anticipated comeback album Compton a year later, on which the rapper not only shone alongside legendary guests such as Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Ice Cube but was also represented – like no other on the record – on a whole six songs. This hardly went unnoticed in the hip hop world: the multi-layered lyricist took advantage of the public attention, and just a few months later, he released his second album-length work. With Malibu, Anderson .Paak invited ScHoolboy Q and The Game, among others, for guest verses and made it to the Billboard Top 10 in R&B/Hip Hop.

With his albums through the cities of California

In addition to a viral live performance on the Tiny Desk series and guest appearances on records by peers such as Mac Miller, Chance the Rapper and Rapsody, he co-founded the duo NxWorries with respected producer Knxwledge and released an album on Stones Throw in 2016. Continuing with naming his albums after Californian cities, he released Oxnard, and during its recording sessions, he accumulated so much material that the successor Ventura immediately emerged from it. Anderson always has his mentor Dr. Dre at his side, on whose label .Paak is also housed, and for this record even with the help of producer legend Madlib, the musician returned to his roots. In 2020, he made a guest appearance on Eminem’s album Music to be Murdered By, after which his new duo project Silk Sonic saw the light of day – in collaboration with none other than Bruno Mars. An Evening With Silk Sonic, the duo’s album debut, was released in 2021, delivering a heartwarmingly nostalgic blend of soul and R&B – they climbed to #2 on the US album charts. It is difficult to blame .Paak for living the music life in light of his releases: “My wife fucking hates me, I’m not even getting to see my kids all the time because I’m in the studio all the time. This is it. This is everything I have.”