Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Music features, reviews and "first listens" from NPR. Find more music at WUNC's Back Porch Music.

Anderson .Paak Has Earned The Right To Frivolous Rap Fantasies

It's no secret that Anderson .Paak is one of the best entertainers we've got right now — the rapper-singer-songwriter-drummer-producer can spoon together jazz, rap and R&B and land the combination with raspy wit and a Cheshire Cat grin. But, though his work is usually delectable, he's been leaving fans famished so far this year; .Paak lent his voice to Apple for a HomePod commercial earlier this year, but it wasn't clear if the single was a preview of a new album or just a tech giant wielding their 'cool' card for profit. Now that the 32-year-old has released "Bubblin'," his second full-length solo song this year, and with it, a wild, hip-hop hoop dreams spectacle of a music video, we have our answer.

With a broken, Jackson-spitting ATM in tow, Anderson goes on a romp through L.A. in this Calmatic-directed visual blowing cash on all his frivolous rap fantasies. If you're not prepared for the ride, you could get whiplash: Hanging from a chandelier, posting up in a fur coat with his new pet zebra, diving into a pool of dollars, shooting dice with boys on the street (sporting an untied durag and oversized Phila jersey, no less) and beckoning a gang of strippers to bounce in a burger joint — all while rapping at hyper-speed over a string-and-bass weighted beat from AntMan Wonder and Jahlil Beats. The only constant in all of the mayhem is the cash machine, which at one point confides in a date, over dinner, about .Paak abusing its generosity.

According to .Paak, "Bubblin' " is just the tip of the iceberg for what he has planned this year. The Oxnard, Calif. native told Beats 1 upon releasing the single today that he and Dr. Dre have an entire album in store.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Sidney Madden is a reporter and editor for NPR Music. As someone who always gravitated towards the artforms of music, prose and dance to communicate, Madden entered the world of music journalism as a means to authentically marry her passions and platform marginalized voices who do the same.
More Stories