Anderson Paak is now a Grammy-nominated artist, and though he didn’t pick up a win last Sunday for his incredibly breakout record Malibu, Paak is still riding high on his own momentum. Well, and the momentum of his frequent collaborator Knxwledge, who he teamed up with to release yet another album last year, Yes Lawd! as Nx Worries. That record has also been critically-acclaimed, and last night Paak and Knxwledge performed one of the album’s standout songs “What More Can I Say” On The Tonight Show with an unexpectedly laidback setting.
Paak begins the song prone on the couch, before getting into it with different women coming and going to berate him. Back when the album came out in October I took issue with some of the language in the song — namely his assertion of “look what they’re wearing” when it comes to women who catch his eye, which is a phrase that’s frequently used to perpetuate victim-blaming within rape culture, as though women and their clothing are to blame for how men choose to behave. Nope.
Still, in this case it’s clear that .Paak is trying to work things out in his relationship, and the song is an honest meditation on the struggles of monogamy that don’t often get addressed this publicly. Watch it above and look for much more from Paak in the coming months.