Anderson .Paak - Ventura

Anderson .Paak has been taking stepping stones up the California Coast with each album. Even at the very inception of his pointed moniker, he was expanding and venturing, from the small neighbourhood of Venice to the high-class getaway spot of Malibu to the sprawling cityspace of Oxnard, each record gets as big and as populous as their respective locations.

Venice was not a standout project, with its overly-synthetic and super stiff production, Dr. Dre had exceptional foresight to be able to pick out his talents from his debut album. But the guardian of the West Coast let Anderson shine on his hometown-tributing comeback album Compton, a huge platform that immensely boosted his visibility, and marked the start of a prosperous working relationship between the two. For .Paak’s next record Malibu, he threw out the bedroom production and enlisted his backing band, The Free Nationals, to surround the songs with live instrumentation. With ScHoolboy Q, The Game and more at the helm, it proved a gargantuan success, earning him a grammy nom and a deal with Aftermath Entertainment, which, to come full circle, is Dre’s record label.

Bringing us to 6 months ago, and Anderson was celebrating the release of his first major label album. In a matter of a few short years, his albums sounded as big as his bedroom, and now it feels like his work encompasses his entire home state, piece by piece. However, Oxnard, a collection of more hip-hop-oriented tracks that although boasted an A-grade guestlist, received surprisingly middling reception, even from fans, largely due to his lean towards hip-hop. In the wake of this unexpected disappointment, Ventura is its low-key counterpart.

Little connection can be made between the two apart from being nominal companions; Oxnard is more rap-centric, meanwhile Ventura is straight and true soul music. Constructed in same headspace as Oxnard, it forgoes the production hands and mind of Dre. The most enticing aspect of the album, though, is that .Paak ventures back to that bedroom scale seen on Venice, not that it feels amateur, but more incubated. Compared to the festival’s worth of voices that team up on his previous effort, Ventura is as close as lounging on his windowsill, watching him piece it all together, with just a few selected voices entering as a cameo, like OutKast’s André 3000, Smokey Robinson and the late Nate Dogg.

This intimacy traces through songs like the heart-warming ballad “Make It Better”. R&B aficionado Smokey Robinson is featured, but is so understated in his contribution, his intentions seemed to be more covert. He was steered toward collaboratively crafting a classic Smokey song, down to the twinkling piano chords, and lavish strings that have a certain lo-fi quality to them, as if they’re sampled. No surprise, then, that the Alchemist had a hand in production, lending a galloping boombap beat to Anderson as he uses his raspy vocals in attempt to reignite a love that was lost to time.

.Paak has come a long way from his 2016 NPR Tiny Desk Concert, a disruptive performance garnered over 30m views on YouTube, and a wide majority of the LP’s tracks that could well have graced the set. Be it the glittered, Motown piano of “Come Home” or the slinky bass of “King James”, it neatly adopts the velvety sound and voltic energy that defined the greatness of that concert. The latter song was the record’s lead single, and sees .Paak projecting like a hungry prophet atop a platform of sticky horns and a carnival of noises. It’s an immediately enjoyable track, easily taking up whole days of real estate in your head, but as much as moments like these are textbook Anderson, it’s also Ventura’s downfall, unchanged from his already well-defined thumbprint on modern soul.

“Good Heels” sits at an interlude’s length, initially feeling as though the plug was pulled far too early for the song to stand up next to its peers on the album. But given how narratively short the fling is in its lyrics, it befits the runtime perfectly, literally cutting the whole thing off. Anderson is joined by the irrefutably-talented Jazmine Sullivan to play the role of the woman in this casual relationship, which starts off smoothly. Slo-mo drum fills and crashes calms the body to match the sonorous chords, beatific guitar and crunchy snares. The story begins with .Paak’s unhurried crooning, trading off with Jazmine as she comes in to quicken the pace. Back comes .Paak with an ever hastier flow, illustrating the increasing impatience they are both feeling waiting for each other, telling the vignette musically as well as lyrically.

A rapturous handful of tracks come with a strong, danceable groove, borrowing classic jazz’s playful vocal scatting (“Winner’s Circle”), disco music’s four-to-the-floor beat (“Reachin’ 2 Much”), Kaytranada’s snapping house rhythms (“Yada Yada”) and then there’s “Twilight”, which didn’t just borrow Pharrell’s off-kilter bounce, but had him on deck, first-hand. Moreover, “Yada Yada”’s deep, rubbery electro-bass decorates a more reflective track, but nonetheless represents .Paak’s inability to stick with a single premise. Before reaching its delectable beat, the intro undergoes several drastic changes; it’s a jarring start that only presents seemingly dead-end ideas. This indecision cankers the song lyrically, too, switching from complaining about shit-talkers, worrying about global warming to reminiscing on his come-up, it all feels completely disjointed.

However, there are moments where the instrumental transfusions provide blood-fizzing apexes on Ventura. “Reachin’ 2 Much” begins with him and heir-to-the-soul-throne Lalah Hathaway treacling into each eardrum side-by-side. Peppy trumpet hits and meaty drums force tension as the lyrics denote someone coming on too strong, questions about one’s true motivations circulating, until the G-funk electronics pioneered by Dr. Dre glide the track into its second, more lengthy part. A syrupy bassline-and-chord combo perfectly backdrop the call-and-response verse, complete with modulated background vocals that add up to a track as smooth as the best of Erykah Badu. There’s even a nod to her hidden in the lyrics, and her untimely work definitely influences a bulk of this album.

Though Ventura offers the soul-driven side of Anderson, the induction of legendary rappers is still welcomed. Although, the two hip-hop artists that do feature are of a specific breed, one that has more than enough experience in R&B and soul. Amongst the elastic bassline and Thundercat-style vocal harmonies on “Come Home”, a gummy guitar line heralds André 3000’s verse. For the second time this year, he ushers himself from the pantheon of rap to give us peasants a verse that would be career-defining for any other rapper, adhering to the song’s subject of bargaining for his former woman, while tossing in some unthinkable wordplay, namely the “WWF” lines that kick-starts the verse.

“What Can We Do?” concludes the album with the late vocals of Nate Dogg, whose feature is mixed in as if he was right there in the studio; refraining from the tasteless posthumous collabs that didn’t go as smoothly (see: Drake, Michael Jackson). The outro to the track actually brings to mind one of the best treatings of a deceased artist’s unreleased catalogue - Kendrick Lamar’s “Mortal Man”. Like it, Anderson weaves excerpts of Nate either in the booth or in interview to form a natural dialogue, as Nate walks away from the mic as Anderson tries to speak with him, but in more ways than one, he was gone too soon. The track itself is just as flavourful, blending sitar into the sweet sauce for an Indian twist, but as a closing song, it feels as though the album has left before the curfew, something which has never been apparent on previous record, but plagued it here. Instead of being a happy, tight 40 minutes, it's a sad reminder that .Paak only delivered 11 tracks.

Anderson .Paak has followed up Oxnard very quickly, but many were quick to criticise an album that wasn’t too outside of his wheelhouse. Ventura is firmly within in it, easily relating to Malibu in terms of vibe and aesthetic, unfortunately without anything close to the infectious swagger of a cut like “Come Down”. No doubt, it’s another solid piece of work, but .Paak can do this sound justice on the fly nowadays, and it will be difficult to sustain another whole record just on the standalone merits of good songwriting and smooth production. He needs to switch it up, something more dramatic than the mild implementation of hip-hop. He needs another stepping stone.