MC: Is it a challenge to maintain vocal health with the constant touring?
.Paak: Absolutely. I tell my management, “Don’t book me for three and four gigs in a row and expect me to have a voice.” Sometimes they think I’m like a rapper who can do a bunch of shows in a row and keep my voice. That’s not the case. I’m up here singing notes. It’s exhausting. If you see our live show I’m not phoning it in. I definitely had to learn the hard way on my first couple of tours, how to take care of my voice. I got the hang of it––next year I’m not doing as many shows as I did this year. I don’t think I will ever do that many shows. (Laughs) I’m planning to do less shows for triple the money!
MC: Your current release, Malibu, is released through Steel Wool/OBE/Art Club/EMPIRE but you are now signed to Aftermath, Dr. Dre’s company. How does that work? Is there a new project coming for them?
.Paak: We start next month. But I’ve already been working with Dre on what he’s working on. Ty (Tyhiem Cannon), the A&R over there, is really good helping out with whatever I need. It’s dope. Everyone over there is really wonderful. It’s interesting with me and Dre. We had a lot going on before I signed with them, and he was great about just letting us rock with Malibu, because we dropped it at the top of the year and we’ve pretty much been on the road ever since. We’re doing a lot with Malibu and now we’ve got the other project out, Yes Lawd and rocking with that. Dre has been very supportive, like “Just do your thing, you’re a rock star.” And he’s very hands-on working on the next project.
MC: NxWorries, your collaboration with Knxwledge that resulted in Yes Lawd, is super-deep, short songs, lots of changes, like an aural collage.
.Paak: Knxwledge put that together and made it an album. We had a bunch of songs and a bunch of files everywhere and J. Cole mixed it. I know at one point Knxwledge was hating me because he was trying to get this album together and I was gone. I think it came out amazing. It was a couple of years in the making. I’m proud of it. It’s some of my best stuff, and the way he did it was really cool. I like that it’s short, sweet and to the point; a great start. I’m working more with him in the future.
MC: With your output of songs, you must write constantly. What is the technique?
.Paak: I hardly ever write with my hand. I’m a horrible speller, so it’s easier to put it on the iPhone with auto-correct. I can work with beats. I get a lot of information from conversations, or movies, or other songs and talking to people. I write everything down. When I find some production I like, whether I’m producing it or I get a beat, I can usually go and retrace my steps, find a little blurb that I wrote, and I can build off of there. Or I can just write on the spot. I can go in the booth and do this kind of “speaking in tongues,” if you will, get melodies off the top of my head, and pick and choose from there. It depends on what I feel like or the producer I’m working with, what he’s comfortable with.
Some of the producers like me to just go off of the top. That’s how Dre works, and Cookie Monster and some others. I just rock with what feels right. But I definitely always have lyrics to go, and I am always writing. It’s important to me to keep it sharp. I’m trying to stick to a cadence and find the melody. I’m big on cadence and tone. I’m a drummer so I’m writing from a drummer’s perspective.
MC: What do you tell someone who is out there hustling, who wants to make an impact?
.Paak: I just say it’s got to be like breathing. A lot of people want to do this thing, and they think there’s a shortcut, but they don’t take any risks and they don’t put both feet in the water. They devote all of this time to some job that they don’t really want to do and only a little bit of time for their so-called passion.
With anything––relationships or music––you have to be wiling to be all-out 100 percent, be willing to be humiliated, broke down, put everything you have into this.
At the end of the day you have to be focused. You have to trust that it might get really shitty before it gets really good. At the end of the day, the person who didn’t give 100 percent is going to have regrets. Because they know they could have gone harder.
Contact Christina Lo Duca at FYI Brand Communications
