5.8/10
Favorite Track: "Come Home (Ft. Andre 3000)"
Least Favorite Track: "Reachin 2 Much (Feat. Lalah Hathaway)"
Ventura is the fourth studio album by American singer, rapper, producer, and drummer Anderson .Paak. Ever since this man’s career was put on kickstart by his frequent collaborator Dr. Dre i’ve always felt as if I am the only person who wasn’t immediately captivated by his music. Despite it’s critical and commercial acclaim Malibu didn’t do much for me. I felt as if it had too many moving parts that didn’t work together. Oxnard was an improvement in my eyes, as it saw a shift in direction for .Paak which I found pretty enjoyable, and that brings us to his 2019 release in Ventura. This record is certainly a return to form for Anderson as it sees him ditch some of the hip hop production trends that we saw on Oxnard in turn for some of his classic soul and RnB stylings. I’m all for him ditching the hiphop as I always found him much more effective as a singer, however Ventura to me still see’s Anderson down for the count. I have always found his sound kind of hollow and one dimensional and that seems to just be amplified on this project. I find a huge chunk of this record to become repetitive, sleepy, and really formulaic after a certain point. .Paak definitely hits some highs but he unfortunately has to endure some extreme lows to get to them. In other words, Ventura never really pushes any boundaries or evolves into anything more than the horn filled, funky, drum driven, fusion of neo-soul and funk that it is ; it’s simply forgettable. There is no denying .Paaks instrumental ability throughout this thing as it is consistently groovy and enjoyable but Ventura does the opposite of push boundaries and it really seems to miss something. Weather that something is interesting lyrical themes, hooks, or any replay value at all, most of the tracks on this thing are undoubtedly missing a piece. This becomes so much more obvious when tracks off this thing like “Reachin’ 2 Much (feat. Lalah Hathaway)” are amplified and dragged out so much longer than they need to be. Song’s such as this one and a few others in the track list seem to be extended simply because there is a catchy instrumental, but the instrumental generally becomes stale very quickly when it is thrown in an intro or outro for three minutes straight without any real direction. This man will never not be funky, but that's sort of all he is. Despite this “Come Home (feat. Andre 3000)” is a highlight for me. This is only one of the many cases where one of Venturas many features come through magnificently. I love the way the epic sounding keys and gospel like vocals open up the album and in turn, the song. The drum beat with the rapid kick drum patterns and snare rolls also makes the track very unique. The bridge before Andre’s verse seems like sort of an intro with some amazing but simple guitar plucking that transitions into Andre’s amazing verse almost flawlessly. There’s no denying that this song will most likely stand above others on this record for a long time. Outside of that, “Make It Better (feat. Smokey Robinson) is another highlight. It’s probably the only memorable hook (or any hook at all) on the entire record but honestly that’s really it. This album exists on two sides of a spectrum. The performances are solid while the tunes are forgettable and boring. I think something that I read on rateyourmusic.com by a user named “aaronlitvack” summarizes the album better than I ever could. “On this album Anderson .Paak is a K-Mart version of a really nice outfit. There’s nothing wrong with anything he does, it just feels like something is missing”.