Anderson Paak Quotes

I don’t think there’s anybody that has such a keen sense of vocal production and attention to detail as Dre.

A lot of people who work with Dre, you’re lucky if anything sees the light of day.

Nothing I do is ever void of melody. I know it might seem like I’m doing a lot of rapping, but I’m always utilizing tone and trying to find a key signature. So, I don’t look at myself as a rapper.

I don’t know many artists who’ve come out of Beverly Hills, y’know? You need that struggle.

I just want people to be affected by the music. I’m really affected by my surroundings and put everything in my music – what I’m not getting and what I desire. I want it to be uncompromised… almost a spiritual thing.

My wife was born in Korea, and we met in music college; she was there for vocal, and I was there for drums.

My mom had a produce business in in Oxnard, and we used to take these long trips to talk to farmers and different distributors. She’d take us with her after picking us up from school, and she’d be blasting all this old soul music and R&B. I knew all those O’Jays songs before I knew Snoop or Dre or Tupac.

I didn’t start playing drums until I was 12, for school band; they didn’t have any saxophones left. My step-pops had a kit at the house, and I had never done anything that I understood so quick. It was so natural. It was the most fun and consistent thing in my life.

I’d been watching documentaries about early rock where white artists took ‘race records’ from blues and soul musicians to achieve mass appeal. I wanted to flip that and do an EP covering only white artists.

Life got very good – we went from living in a one-bedroom apartment to a five-bedroom mansion by the time I was in high school. I had everything I wanted growing up, though all I wanted was music stuff – drums, a PC, turntables.

A lot of Knxwledge’s instrumentals just brought out this tone and swagger that I had played with before but had never really pinpointed before on my Anderson .Paak stuff. But then it just came so easily.

The dot stands for ‘detail’ – always be paying attention to detail. I feel that people take you as serious as you take yourself. I spent a lot of time working on my craft, developing my style, and after I came out of my little incubation, I promised that I would pay attention to detail.

My mom was born in Korea – Seoul, Korea, during the ’50s, ’51. She was abandoned; her and my uncle were abandoned. My grandfather was a Seabee and adopted my mom and my uncle, and brought them to Compton in the ’50s. That’s where she was raised.

I didn’t always take myself that seriously. Image-wise, I was somewhat of a jokester.

If you grow up playing in church, it removes a lot of the boundaries that other musicians might have, growing up with sheet music or whatever.

I tell people a lot of times, if you want to be a part of something, you never know, you kind of just have to be around. A lot of people don’t really have the patience for it, and they don’t stick around. Dre and I are still working together, and we have plenty of music for the future.

My story as an artist has been about trial and error. It’s been about artist development, character building, struggle, happiness and failure, family, and music.

I wanna do a song with Adele! Nobody gets Adele as a feature, so maybe I can. I hope she knows who I am!

It would feel like a smack in the face to sign with any label outside of Dre’s. He took a risk on me, and that means everything.

There’s quite a few artists that didn’t pop off until they were a little older – Rick James being one.

I had a project called ‘Cover Art,’ which was the first project I did under the new name Anderson .Paak. I went through this process where I was recording new music for about six months straight.

I think there’s a void for some authentic soul music with an edge. I think there’s some people who grew up with Motown and Stevie Wonder that still can appreciate Future, Drake, and all these different things, too, but there shouldn’t be a void for those people, as well.

I put a list together. It was like: Get health insurance, get a car, get a bigger apartment, travel more, get a record deal, get a publishing deal, sell 10,000 units, be a part of a No. 1 album, make a million dollars. I got to check off 90 percent of the stuff last year. I hit some serious landmarks in 2015.

I’m part of the generation that grew up with great rappers like 2Pac and Biggie and people like Amy Winehouse. We’ve seen a lot of different artists come and go. Even people who are still here, they seem consumed and blinded by fame. It may not have taken them out physically, but they have been taken out.

If you’re doing black music, you should have a core understanding of where that comes from, and the fundamentals – so you’re not some bozo thinking you’re doing something new.