{"id":660561,"date":"2026-10-29T11:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/660561\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T11:00:11","slug":"anderson-paak-cordae-heavy-is-the-crown-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/660561\/","title":{"rendered":"Anderson .Paak \/ Cordae: Heavy Is the Crown Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The discrepancy sticks out whenever they both talk about love. On the Bill Withers<\/a>– and Ice Cube<\/a>-interpolating lead single \u201cA Good Day,\u201d .Paak rattles off Three 6 Mafia<\/a> and Backstreet Boys references and Cape Cod yacht trips before listing the different nationalities of his flings. It would be standard stuff on his solo albums, and the Hollywood Cole beat is a textbook example of functional but spiritually empty nostalgia bait, but it plays like Drake<\/a>\u2019s \u201cJanice STFU\u201d compared to Cordae, who\u2019s aiming for charismatic nonchalance but comes up flavorless. The song\u2019s funniest and most awkward moment, when Cordae asks .Paak if he can borrow a condom, only lands because .Paak nails the punchline: \u201cWe ain\u2019t the same size!\u201d<\/p>\n

.Paak also has plenty of groaners and generic lines throughout Crown\u2014would-be anthems \u201cAirbender,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m On,\u201d and \u201cDays Like This\u201d might as well be NBA League Pass background noise\u2014but his exuberant personality shines through even his harshest whiffs, coating them with enough molten cheese to warrant an \u201cAw, shucks!\u201d He knows when to mug for the camera and when to hang tight in the pocket, and his showmanship carries him through the few instances where he doesn\u2019t. While Cordae\u2019s love for rap history is apparent and he can ride a beat, he has yet to fully build those performance muscles to the point where he can sell low humor (\u201cYou trapped in the closet like Robert,\u201d \u201cGot the same lawyers as Puff, but I beat the case\u201d) or genuine clunkers like \u201cGot so much soul, must be my soulmate\u201d or the preposterous \u201cSpanish bitch, put my dick in her empanada.\u201d<\/p>\n

A handful of tag-team showings display their errant potential. Over the handsome trot of a J. Cole<\/a> beat, opening track \u201c58th Floor\u201d plays out as a phone call between Cordae, who\u2019s at home playing dollhouse with his daughter, and .Paak, who\u2019s being walked down by the Samoan baby father of his latest situationship. Here, their Craig and Dae Dae<\/a> dynamic works its magic in a rare moment where Cordae meets .Paak\u2019s bravado and writing. They\u2019re also evenly matched on Crown\u2019s handful of sobering story-driven cuts. On \u201cHelpless,\u201d both men examine their roles in disintegrating relationships: Cordae as the young father condemning his daughter with tennis star Naomi Osaka to a life of being chauffeured between her estranged parents\u2019 houses, .Paak as the neglectful father and husband showing up drunk to his son\u2019s birthday before getting in touch with a therapist. \u201cDays Go By\u201d turns childhood car trips into vehicles for the duo to recall memories long since passed on the road to success. These tracks suit Cordae better\u2014his flows and wordplay are more focused and impactful and, ironically, he sounds more at ease.<\/p>\n

Melancholic scene-setting is important, but it doesn\u2019t make the best party music. Heavy Is the Crown resembles a mainstream rap sampler of sorts, and its default settings are the kickback and the car stereo. As a shit-talker and lovable Svengali type, .Paak wipes the floor with Cordae without ever leaving first gear, the Buddy Love<\/a> to his partner\u2019s Sherman Klump. If you\u2019re into the idea of two affable<\/a> yet frequently chauvinistic MCs riffing over serviceable beats from traditionalists like J. Cole, Conductor Williams<\/a>, and Swizz Beatz<\/a>, there are worse ways to spend 30 minutes. But go into Heavy Is the Crown understanding whose head it\u2019s ultimately sitting on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The discrepancy sticks out whenever they both talk about love. On the Bill Withers– and Ice Cube-interpolating lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5316,146,85,46,409,5101],"class_list":["post-660561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}