Anderson .Paak | Singing from behind the kit
Anderson .Paak drums and sings at the same time, and won a Drumeo award for Silk Sonic. His playing, his Ludwig signature kit, and where to start.
There are drummers who sing. There are singers who drum. There is almost nobody who does both, simultaneously, as the front person of the act.
Anderson .Paak does. He sits centre stage, plays the drums, sings the lead, and raps — and the reason it works is that he is a genuinely good drummer, not a frontman with a kit as a prop.
Here is the most entertaining drummer in popular music.
Who is Anderson .Paak?
Brandon Paak Anderson was born on 8 February 1986 in Oxnard, California.
He drummed in church, which is where an enormous number of American funk and gospel players learn, and spent years working as a session drummer, producer and studio hand before anyone knew his name.
His break came through Dr. Dre, who put him on six tracks of Compton in 2015. His own records followed: Malibu (2016), Oxnard (2018) and Ventura (2019), plus NxWorries with the producer Knxwledge.
Silk Sonic
In 2021 he and Bruno Mars released An Evening with Silk Sonic — a full-blooded 1970s soul record made without irony, and a genuine phenomenon.
“Leave the Door Open” won four Grammys, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
Drumeo’s voters gave .Paak Soul/Funk Drummer Of The Year in 2021, specifically for the Silk Sonic drumming.
What Anderson .Paak actually does
He plays 1970s soul drums, accurately. The Silk Sonic sound is not a pastiche — the tuning, the damping, the ghost notes and the hi-hat placement are all correct for the era, which takes real study.
He sings while doing it, and the time does not move. This is the extraordinary part. Singing a lead vocal takes the same part of your brain as phrasing a groove, and almost every drummer who tries it loses one or the other. He does not.
He plays quietly and lets the kit ring. The kick is soft, the snare is dry, and there is space everywhere.
His hi-hat carries the groove. Tight, crisp, and the reason those tracks feel like records from 1973.
He is a producer. He hears the drums as part of a mix, not as a performance — which is why they always sit where they should.
Anderson .Paak’s drum kit
- Drums — DW Collector’s Series custom. His main kit.
- The Ludwig signature. He also has a limited-edition Pee .Wee Signature collection with Ludwig, including a signature snare — and Ludwig shells are exactly the right vintage voice for the Silk Sonic material.
- Cymbals. A wide Sabian setup — 18” AA Sick Hats, a 19” Artisan Crash, a 12” AAX O-Zone Splash stacked over a 10” AA Mini Holy China, a 22” HH Liquid Ride or Artisan Light Ride, a 20” AAX Aero Crash and a 20” HHX Evolution O-Zone Crash — plus Zildjian 14” K hi-hats, which are much of the crispness in the Silk Sonic sound.
Every era, with buy links, is on Anderson .Paak’s Rig Vault page.
Want the sound without the rig?
The seventies soul drum sound is the cheapest great sound in drumming, because it is mostly about muffling.
Damp everything. A tea towel on the snare, a pillow against the kick head, a strip of gaffer tape on the toms. You want short, fat, thumping drums with almost no ring.
Tune the toms low and the snare medium. Then play quietly. Most of the difference between a modern rock sound and a seventies soul sound is stroke weight.
And get one crisp pair of hi-hats. Our cymbal buying guide covers what a heavier hat gets you; the Gear Guru will spec a vintage-voiced kit to a number.
Where to start listening
- Silk Sonic — “Leave the Door Open” (2021). The award-winning one, and a masterclass in restraint.
- Silk Sonic — “777” (2021). Him with the handbrake off.
- “Come Down” (2016). The one that made everyone sit up.
- Dr. Dre — “All in a Day’s Work” (2015). The debut in front of a wide audience.
- Any live Silk Sonic performance. Watch him sing and play at once, then try it.
Final thoughts
There is a temptation to file .Paak as a singer who happens to drum. That gets it backwards. The drumming is the foundation of everything — his phrasing as a vocalist comes out of the same rhythmic instinct, which is why the two things sit together as well as they do.
He is also, straightforwardly, a joy to watch, and there is not enough of that about.
See Anderson .Paak’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Questlove — another drummer who plays soul drums as if it were 1973.