R&B/Soul
United States
Anderson .Paak
Top Songs By Anderson .Paak
More albums from Anderson .Paak
Anderson .Paak's Popular Music Videos
Artist Playlists
About Anderson .Paak
Hometown
Oxnard, CA, United States
Born
February 8, 1986
Genre
R&B/Soul
In 2011, Anderson .Paak was jobless, homeless, the worried father of a new baby boy; by 2015, he was in the studio with Dr. Dre. Raised in Oxnard, northwest of LA, .Paak (born Brandon Paak Anderson in 1986) started out as a teenage drummer in his Baptist church—a communal experience that, along with his mother blasting old R&B, shaped his sense of music for years to come. After staking out his sound on a handful of indie projects (first as Breezy Lovejoy, then as Anderson .Paak), he broke through on Dre’s Compton, cowriting and singing on nearly half the album’s tracks, leveraging a sound both mellow and hard-bitten, lived-in but fresh. (As the story goes, Compton’s brain trust had been playing 2015’s “Suede” by NxWorries, .Paak's collaborative project with the producer Knxwledge, on repeat.)
Featuring collaborators from jazz pianist Robert Glasper to The Game, the Grammy-nominated Malibu arrived at the top of 2016; Oxnard followed in late 2018, and Ventura a year later. Like a lot of figures on LA’s highly adventurous hip-hop scene, .Paak feels both like a throwback (especially alongside Bruno Mars in Silk Sonic) and a sign of things to come: an omnivorous, self-producing singer-songwriter à la Stevie Wonder, whose vision envelops everything from ’60s soul to 2000s trap—not just a personal style, but a summary of Black music as .Paak has experienced it. After an eight-year gap between albums, .Paak and Knxwledge released their second NxWorries project, the woozy hip-hop/soul hybrid Why Lawd?, in 2024.
Anderson .Paak has also released music as a member of Silk Sonic and NxWorries.
Musical InfluencesAnderson .Paak's musical influences include 2Pac, KC and the Sunshine Band, Morris Day and more.
Influenced by Anderson .PaakAnderson .Paak has influenced the music of Kota the Friend, Natasha Ghosh, CHINCHILLA and more.
Similar to: Anderson .Paak
Discover more music and artists similar to Anderson .Paak, like NxWorries, Kendrick Lamar, Free Nationals
