No corner of California is invisible to Anderson .Paak’s eye.
After releasing his sun-soaked debut, “Venice,” in 2014, the soulful singer, producer and drummer caught the attention of West Coast hip-hop legends Dr. Dre and The Game, both of whom featured him on their 2015 records. .Paak cruised along the California coast after that. His second record, “Malibu,” solidified his focus: to honor the place he’s from and the sounds that came before him.
His working relationship with Dr. Dre has continued since then. First, the mogul signed .Paak, and then he joined him in the studio for what would become two distinctly different records: the rap-leaning “Oxnard” and its recent successor, “Ventura,” which did a severe 180 by re-routing back to .Paak’s soul roots. The two records are named for and pay tribute to the neighboring coastal towns that .Paak called home as a kid, and they were released within just five months of each other, in November 2018 and April 2019, respectively.
When I spoke to .Paak between his performances at the two Coachella festival weekends, he was still grappling with the pace of it all.
“I almost forgot I put out an album because I was so focused on nailing Coachella,” he said. When crowds at the festival sang along to tracks from Ventura, he was momentarily worried it had leaked early.
During the press cycle for Oxnard, .Paak described it as the album he dreamed of making in high school, when he was listening to and idolizing artists he’d eventually call collaborators. How does anything possibly stack up against that?
“‘Ventura’ is like my little baby,” he said. “I want to protect it from the world and keep it in an incubator. It’s almost like a love letter. There’s a lot of stuff that I tried on this album that I wouldn’t usually do.”
He told me he took a chance by being “more vulnerable (and) more lovey” on “Ventura.” Even the cover art reflects these differences: “Oxnard” depicts .Paak performing to massive crowds and frames success as owning expensive cars. The black-and-white portrait of .Paak and his son that covers “Ventura” is an intimate moment that nods to a different kind of success.
“With Oxnard, (Dr. Dre) was way more hands-on with the production and the writing,” .Paak said.
Is their relationship still that of master and apprentice? The reality is not so easily classified.
“He’s my friend first. Definitely a mentor. An OG,” .Paak said. “That dude is really a special dude to me, and I know he has a lot of trust in me.”
While both records were recorded in the same sessions, there was a strict delineation between them.
“When the time came to do Ventura, (Dr. Dre) just pretty much let me go,” .Paak said. “Some of the songs he was maybe not feeling as much, but I think he put the trust in me and was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna let you get this off.’”
The duality of these spiritually linked records reflects the closeness of the places that made Anderson .Paak. A 15-minute drive down Highway 101 (in good traffic, that is) takes you from Ventura to Oxnard, which is where .Paak saw his estranged father, a retired Air Force mechanic, assault his mother. His father was sent to prison, and the next time .Paak saw him was at his funeral. His mother was also incarcerated. Having made and lost a fortune growing strawberries, she made another one as a gambler – until she was convicted of not declaring her winnings.
It was in this corner of California that .Paak taught at a music school, and it was also where he would meet the woman who is now his wife and mother to his children. A little farther up 101, in Santa Barbara, is where he was fired from a job at a marijuana farm, a situation that made his small family homeless for a time.
Oxnard gave him grit, he said, and Ventura is a place that let him find his depth.
“I was ‘the only black kid’ since I was in elementary school,” .Paak said. “There were, like, one or two black kids at my school and even in the town. So (living there meant) a lot of isolation, a lot of trying to find my identity, a lot of churchin’.”
Moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music brought about a “culture shock,” he said, but these combined experiences gave him nothing but perspective and appreciation.
“I’ve been with my wife for 10 years now, and we’ve just been going through a lot of ups and downs. When I looked over the songs for ‘Ventura,’ I realized I wanted to make a true love album and a true, soulful R&B album. I think that’s worth getting at.”
After two records in five months, .Paak is ready to slow down.
“There’s a part of me that wants to take a lot of time on the next project,” he said.
After giving out energy and love and trust in people like Dr. Dre, .Paak is ready to have that repaid: “(I want to) do a lot more evaluation, a lot more learning, a lot more receiving. I’ve been in a constant state of giving.”
Courtesy of The Big Issue Australia / INSP.ngo