#64

#64. Anderson .Paak (feat Kendrick Lamar) - Tints (#67, 2018)

6th of 2018

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There's a solid period of time in the mid to late 2010s when a lot of collaborations just felt like cheat codes. There's a tendency for them to never live up to what you hope for, but at this point I was just all over it. For Kendrick Lamar, his tendency to do features seemed to drop off a little which made them all the more precious, while for Anderson .Paak, he just had this uncanny ability to effectively bounce off everyone and come out looking good. I only hesitate to go in deeper about this because it's very much going to happen again on this list. With that being said, it feels like a cruel injustice that Anderson .Paak has never even cracked the Billboard Hot 100 outside of his Silk Sonic work. This is someone who is teeming with charisma and should be a star, but might instead just be known as the guy who wins nearly every GRAMMY Award he's nominated for (he's won about twice as many as he's lost which is a maddening ratio).

Unlike "Bubblin" (#101), "Tints" actually did end up on Anderson .Paak's 2018 album "Oxnard". It's not an album I remember quite as fondly as "Malibu", but there were a handful of songs I tended to take away from it. Part of me wants to say that it doesn't have quite the same force of personality going around, but there are certainly memorable moments. I'm very fond of the song "Cheers", where Anderson .Paak reminisces on the loss of Mac Miller who died only two months before the album came out, and it also features another rapper thinking about their former bandmate who passed away not long before that. It's actually a fairly upbeat song all things considered. There's also the song "Headlow" and if you haven't heard it, I'll let you use your imagination regarding what that song's about. If I can say one thing about it, then perhaps it's that it makes sense why he needs his windows tinted on the next song.

When we get to "Tints", it feels like more of a victory lap than a big grand statement. It's basically him making something akin to a pop hit, even if it didn't amount to being much of one (it charted in Australia though, which is noteworthy). Gone are all those boisterous musical ideas and off-the-cuff performances, he's playing this whole song pretty straight. It's so straight that one might argue he's really saying that he needs tits. It doesn't make the song bland though. The ceiling for Anderson .Paak is just so high for what he can do. At the very least, the song still has an infectious guitar that locks into place when the chorus starts.

Kendrick Lamar is also here. It's just a 35 second cameo, and if we're talking about infamous guest verses of his, this just isn't going to rate much of a mention in a world where "Control" and "Like That" exist (I could keep going). It's assuredly a metronome kind of verse, where nothing's derailed, and you just stay with your good mood you were already in. Think of it as just another carefully casual opening round and perhaps don't double check just how many more times Kendrick Lamar is going to appear on this list.