MC: We did a quick historical search of artists who sing lead who are also drummers. It’s a short list, Don Henley and Karen Carpenter notwithstanding. In your shows you play drums on some songs, but on others you have loops and stand up and sing.
.Paak: Exactly. It’s trial and error. I can’t drum on every song, and I definitely don’t want to. Eventually I’d love to have a drummer. I’m a drummer myself, and I’m not too bad. So it is hard to find one that I like. Back when I would play drums no one would make a big deal out of it. A lot of people still don’t know I play and when I do the live show I love to see their reactions.
MC: Like a surprise for the uninitiated?
.Paak: I like building it. Not starting on the kit, but then going to the kit like a reveal and bouncing back and forth. It’s something different. When I’m on the kit, it’s one of the things I’m most comfortable with being behind those drums. So I’m able to channel it a little differently on the kit, to get outside of myself and be free. It’s important.
MC: Your “Tiny Desk Concert” that came out on National Public Radio has you playing drums the entire time. What do you recall about that gig?
.Paak: Man, I was very nervous. I think we had, like, two shows before that. I had played the night before and I was up all night; I was hung over and knew it was gong to be a strict thing and I thought I was going to sound like trash. I had never done anything stripped down like that. When we got there I had no clue that it was going to sound decent. I could barely hear myself and there was only one mic. I was kind of dreading it, but when it came out it didn’t sound too bad. Props to whoever mixed that thing. “Suede,” which we had never done stripped down before came out cool. I think it’s one of our biggest videos out. It’s got like a million views. It was cool to do something that was all drums.
MC: You studied in the drum program at Musicians Institute in Hollywood, correct?
.Paak: Yeah. They didn’t give me a scholarship when I couldn’t afford to go there, but I still give them a little shout out. They did let me be a TA (teaching assistant) and I ended up meeting a lot of people and learning music I wouldn’t have known about. I learned to read basic music charts, and that was a great experience.
MC: How essential is it for modern musicians to study music?
.Paak: I had developed in the church by ear. But later, with formal training, I got to learn proper techniques and rudiments that really helped me out. So it’s good to have both. Honestly, at the end of the day, to get the most out of this it’s important to be able to read music because you don’t want to have any blockage. When you can read music it’s a language you can speak with anybody. If you want to have that greasy shit and you also know how to read music, there’s nowhere you can’t go to get your point across with whomever. If you want to write scores and do different things you have to write music and translate it.
That’s where I am now. I want to be able to do movie scores and work with orchestras, but I’m going to have to have a middleman to translate that for me because I don’t know how to write. And I will have to have a damn good one, because I want to get the grease across too. Eventually I want to go back and really learn how to read charts to develop my musical theory. I think this is really important.
MC: Dr. Dre has noted that your vocal identity is instantly identifiable. The singers who you credit as your influences certainly also share this characteristic.
.Paak: All the singers I like, yeah. They have a unique thing and an undeniable tone. Today people use Autotune and comps and everyone sounds the same. But the people I grew up listening to and that I really respect had unique tones––even the ones that weren’t the best singers––you just knew it was them. I spent a lot of time trying to develop that. I wanted something that couldn’t be duplicated, or couldn’t be bitten, and if someone did try to bite me they’d sound ridiculous––that was my main thing. Once I started in I had to put production, or drumming for different people, or just rapping on the backburner. I wanted to be a really good vocalist. I spent a lot of time developing that.
MC: How did you develop your singing voice?
.Paak: So many recordings. I’m a studio rat. I think that’s the only way to develop your singing voice is to get in there and just record, record, record, record. Get comfortable. See what works for you and what doesn’t. Trial and error. It took me some time.
When I was working on the Yes Lawd project with Knxwledge and when I got into working on Compton, I was okay that this was the pocket I liked and it was resonating with the producers. I knew it was worth developing.
