NxWorries: Why Lawd? Album Overview

In December 2020, Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge carried out on the Double Happiness pageant. The present was a livestream and the artists had been remoted with no viewers besides the digital camera crew. “I hate it, bro. I would like the folks, I would like the sweat,” Paak joked. However NxWorries squeezed loads of enjoyable out of their barely 10-minute set. Its most hanging second made it straight onto their second album, Why Lawd? “Cease playin’ wit’ my boy Knxwledge,” Paak shouts via reverb’d vocals, hyping up early single “The place I Go,” a clean jam that equally channels early 2000s Monica and Knx’s WrapTaypes sequence. When the clip seems within the album model, it sounds grandiose but humble. Paak and Knx have toured the world, offered out arenas, and labored with loads of larger-than-life collaborators. However that stripped-back rendition of “The place I Go” incorporates each the intimacy of a steamy rendezvous and the targeted showmanship of a band able to shut down a ten,000-cap room.

NxWorries’ 2016 debut, Sure Lawd!, was as carefree as a new-age mack daddy rap&B album could possibly be. The billowing thump of Knxwledge’s exhaustive backlog of beat tapes blended effectively with Paak’s scratchy croon-raps, someplace between Joe Tex and Black Dynamite with a style for vegan sausage. Eight years on, with increased particular person profiles, how would NxWorries recapture that patent-leather Air Pressure sheen? The splendid Why Lawd? not solely succeeds, it expands their imaginative and prescient. The beats are extra formidable, the lyrics extra considerate on topics of affection, rejection, and coital bliss. They sound as enamored with having cherished and misplaced as with the long run joys and miseries simply over the horizon.

Sure Lawd! got here to social gathering and sprint, however Why Lawd? takes a barely extra grown strategy. The primary correct observe “86Sentra” begins out enterprise as typical, with Paak dangling used automobiles in entrance of affection pursuits and rapping about enjoying the Tremendous Bowl over an ominous organ loop. On “MoveOn,” he contemplates the ache he’s put himself via by dwelling recklessly. Then, as if to place that perception to the check, “KeepHer” fleshes out the story of an ex-wife decided to depart his bullshit for a brand new paramour, regardless of how a lot cash he throws her means. “He don’t love you the way in which I—/You don’t look good in that Hyundai,” he says, earlier than begging her for farewell intercourse within the subsequent verse. It’s rewarding to see his slimeball allure turned towards him: Paak is never, if ever, on the enterprise finish of a breakup track.