Anderson .Paak: "Come Down"

Anderson .Paak‘s 2015 ascent deserves a celebration. “If I get too high now sugar come on, I might never come down,” the California singer yells on his latest single, the triumphant “Come Down”. It’s not a warning so much as a promise that .Paak isn’t going anywhere. “Come Down” is raw funk: a shifty bass line and shuffling drum loop propel the song. Early in the track, Hi-Tek flips a sample carrying the Israeli national anthem and reinvigorates the melody later with a wailing guitar on the fade-out. .Paak is in command though, and he leads the charge like a latter-day James Brown folding in contemporary hip-hop sensibilities.

It’s impossible to deny a similarity in .Paak’s delivery here with the syncopated flow Kendrick Lamar mined throughout To Pimp a Butterfly, but there’s no flagrant copycat effect to complain about. Instead, .Paak has a way of making everything his own without losing himself in the shapeshifting. “Don’t I make it look easy? Don’t I make it look good?” he sings, his voice oozing with rasp. (.Paak even manages to make the phrase “cool beans” sound irresistible.) As large as his 2015 accomplishments loom, “Come Down” feels potentially bigger for .Paak. He’s already reached another new height.

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