Anderson .Paak and The Free Nationals at Huntington Bank Pavilion.
“We're gonna play this whole album, top to bottom, and then some.”
photo of Anderson .Paak at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver, taken by Israel Ramos.
There isn’t much Anderson .Paak can’t do. He’s a Grammy-winning singer, rapper, songwriter, producer, and drummer. If that’s not enough, he’s also venturing into film and television as a voice actor, writer, and director. They invented the word “multi-hyphenate” for creatives like him.
When I started writing for Firebird about two years ago, one of the staff’s first questions was who I wanted to see live the most. My answer, obviously, was Anderson .Paak. I even have a Malibu poster in my room. When I saw that he was bringing The Free Nationals along for The Malibu Tour, the next question wasn’t if I’d go or not: it was what ticket I’d buy.
Maurice “Mobetta” Brown and GAWD (“Good Ass Women Deserve”) were the openers, but they stayed on stage throughout the concert. Brown continued his critically-acclaimed trumpeting and GAWD provided smooth background vocals to compliment .Paak’s raspier voice. At a lot of concerts, the openers just warm the crowd up and then dip, but .Paak masterfully incorporated them into the main set. The Free Nationals also joined them: Jose Rios (lead guitar, background vocals); Ron Avant (keyboard, rhythm guitar, BGVs); Kelsey Gonzales (bass guitar, bass synth); and Callum Connor (percussion, BGVs) consistently travel with .Paak as his main backing band.
The first hour of The Malibu Tour setlist was, well, Malibu. He quipped near the top of the show that they’re “gonna play the whole album, top to bottom” and that they did. An early standout was a remix of “Heart Don’t Stand A Chance,” with bass guitar and trumpet accentuating an incredible drumming display from .Paak himself. Honestly, if I laid out every drumming highlight, we’d be here all day. He was in complete command across Malibu classics like “Put Me Thru” and “Am I Wrong,” flexing his skill on percussion while singing just like the studio vocals. On the latter, ScHoolboy Q’s verse was replaced by a huge flourish of percussion and synths which smoothly blended into the intro to “Without You.”
.Paak specializes in seamless transitions, ending one song singing at the front of the stage only to run towards his elevated drum set—while singing, of course—by the start of the next track, none better than “The Season / Carry Me.” He got the crowd involved, rapping “The Season” from center stage before getting behind the drums for “Carry Me.” What connected the two? In the funniest moment in the whole set, he recounted a story that inspired “Carry Me” over a simple drum beat. Here are the SparkNotes: “Six years old, I tried my first pair of Jordans on,” he raps on the track, and he told us live that those first J’s were Cement 3s his mother begrudgingly bought him at the mall. She didn’t want him to get the shoes dirty, but as they walked outside, he saw how dirty the ground was, so he asked his mother, “Momma, can you carry me?” to their ride home. .Paak told the story with the timing and rhythm of the song itself, and once he said the second lyric—which is the main refrain on the hook—you could feel the entire audience come to the realization that we flowed right into “Carry Me.” The Malibu momentum never skipped a beat, all the way to its uplifting outro “The Dreamer,” complete with .Paak offering us motivation to keep pushing towards our goals, even when they don’t seem possible.
As much as I love Malibu, I was glad this concert wasn’t just that tracklist. The second hour of the set started with a brief intermission from The Free Nationals, who played “Beauty & Essex” and “Eternal Light” from their self-titled record. I love the official versions of both of these songs, and the live instrumentation served as a well-needed break for .Paak as he soon came back out to do a selection of his greatest hits. I was especially happy to hear “Tints,” the Oxnard single that introduced me to him by way of its Kendrick Lamar feature back in 2018. Renditions of Ventura singles “Make It Better” and the Grammy-winning “Come Home” prominently featured supporting vocals from GAWD that surpassed the BGVs on the original. We even got a KAYTRANADA track and some Silk Sonic, both of which were welcome surprises well-received by the crowd.
But what I’ll remember most is the last song of the set, “Dang!” by the late, great Mac Miller, who was a close friend of .Paak's. Introducing the song, he led a call-and-response: “We love you Mac! We miss you Mac!” and the lyrics of “Dang!” hit even harder. The track is really about trying to get your girl back, for whom .Paak laments “Gone too soon, wait!/We was just hanging.” Mac Miller told Genius in 2016 that “Anderson wrote this for people that passed away in his life—and I didn’t know that. I was like, ‘Would you be okay if I made this a love song?’” In the wake of Miller’s untimely death in 2018, this chorus bears even more of .Paak’s original meaning and acts as a fitting tribute to his lost friend. For most of the songs played tonight, verses from other artists were either cut or reimagined, but .Paak let Mac’s part on “Dang!” rock in its entirety.
With The Free Nationals, Mobetta, and GAWD in tow, Anderson .Paak delivered the best live show I’ve ever seen. His breath control, his energy, and his versatility amazed me at every turn. The worst part of the set was that the non-Malibu portion was too short. Realistically, we could’ve gotten “The City,” “Might Be,” or “Luh You” from Venice; “Mansa Musa” or “Brother’s Keeper” from Oxnard; “King James” or “Jet Black” from Ventura; or anything from 2024’s Why Lawd? like “Daydreaming” or “WalkOnBy.”
Guess I’ll just have to put his next tour on my bucket list.
edited by Alex Oder & Eric Harwood.
photo taken by Israel Ramos (@israelshoots on Instagram).
