Oxnard

There's almost a visible texture to .Paak's sound, its great to see .Paak hasn't lost his sonic world, and continues to map the geography of his sound; thats both funk and hip-hop based but painfully this album is devoid of his personality.

Perhaps .Paak is someone who is made for live performances, where his charm and energy can be feed off of and perhaps his songs dont translate well unless in a live setting but that's not enough of a reason in the 21st century, I mean you can easily feign a live setting, there is an overproduction issue that might be Dre or just .Paak being unable to create the environment required for him to deliver more of himself in these works. At the same time it could just be the lyrical content of the album, which is far too often utterly uninteresting and seems to be existing only for the mere purpose of accompaniment of sound "Headlow" feels the clearest example of this.

"6 Summers" second half shows .Paak with a real concept and some of the best instrumentation of this album. Yes, on the first half of this track the influences of this tune are soo clear, from Heron to Kendrick, to Busta and Wayne. Its only at the half-way point of the track, .Paak takes a sombre tone and shows his penmanship and cadence have actually improved. This is what a .Paak album should sound like if he is going to studio-polish his album, I mean less about being a banger (being that the energy just isn't translated through thanks to everything being so squeaky clean) or paying ode to conventions of sound, instead .Paak saying something so beautifully across unique instrumentation and creating a truly wondrous moment within his record. "Saviers Road" seems to live within the glow of "6 summers" and the two tracks serve as my favorite couplet of the album.

"Anywhere" is the correct kind of world-building for this album unlike the tragic "Mansa Musa" & "Brother's Keeper". Where "Mansa Musa"'s instrumentation & lyrical content fail, "Brother's Keeper" has a triple beat switch up which is as disruptive of mood as having the explosive voice on the sparse section of the track while the monotonous voice of Push is hushed by the crescendo of the track. "the money is Jason Derulo" cringe "yerugh" its a wonderful piece of sound that both artists just didn't connect to. Unlike "Anywhere" which is devoid of ego and lives in the mood. And both artists featured understand this, there is no flow that goes against the tide of the tone, no everyone is in service of the groove. And thats why .Paak has to do when he has nowehere else to go thanks to the mastering of this record. If it isn't in service to the mood and instrumentation of this album, then it is forming small narratives that shake you of the funk, and has you paying attention to weaker aspects of the track, ie. its lyrics.

That is until you bump into "Trippy" a track, that thanks to its sample shakes you out of the mood and creates a whole new groove where bassline conquers. Dre's hands must have been on this, since Cole and .Paak's vocals are waay in the front of this track, its intimate as fuck, and the melody of the track is pushed so far back you can only hear the bassline and the tambourine. its trippy, to break the conventions that have been keeping the album from falling apart but its unique side-steps such as this that give albums more dimensions and uniqueness. "Cheers" follows the new groove, and has me asking myself why isn't this the face of the album, its so much more beautiful and unique instead of the faux-hip hop trappings that .Paak has plaguing the front-half of this record. "Cheers" also creates the live-setting I had mentioned beforehand. with vocals and natural instruments clear and at the front of the mix, no production whelms. Q-tip didn't need the beat-switch up but his cadence still is still so very unique, and all but takes over the groove of the track, what the bassline was doing, he does with his voice. there is no place for diatonic's here and the saxophone solo again glistens the way TPAB would. This is what .Paak needed too bad it only arrived at the tailend of this record.

"Left to Right" can fuck right off.

So in the end, this is yet another flawed .Paak album with brillant moments, that will no doubt become huge tracks within the hip-hop community and as such, .Paak will continue to grow. HOWEVER .Paak needs to handle his mood, its caught between being introspective and jazzy and being overproduced ghetto gospel. He has a live band and needs to stop forsaking them for a studio-polished record. I imagine the way .Paak performs "headlow" will get it a new, sexier feel but as the second track on the record its awful. the tracklisting is utterly broken and has the worse album closer I've heard in a while. Also .Paak doesn't need to have a verse, chorus verse, transition, outro formula on every track man. for someone who creates such unique pieces of funk he is really caught in some awful habits.

Favourites: 6 Summers, Anywhere, Trippy, Cheers & Bubblin.