Last Friday marked the release of Anderson Paak’s fourth solo album, Ventura. The project comes just six months after the release of Oxnard, his third album. While the albums were recorded in the same time frame and under the tutelage of executive producer Dr. Dre, the sounds clearly define two different sounds from Paak. Oxnard’s sound brings back memories of Dre’s signature west coast sound with Paak handling the vocals, while Ventura plants itself firmly in the R&B and soul category that helped set Paak apart with his breakthrough album, Malibu.

Unlike its successors, Malibu blends Paak’s rap and soul sound through the album with impressively few awkward transitions. As mentioned above, that blend helped bring the critical acclaim that progressed Paak into a star. His rise was helped by an impressive run of tours, including his own, a run opening for J Cole, and a European trip opening for Bruno Mars. With a reputation as one of the best performers in hip hop and having a breakthrough album under his belt (plus an underrated collaboration album with producer Knxwledge, Yes Lawd!) expectations and excitement were abound for Paak’s follow up.

Almost three years later, Paak released the highly anticipated Tints single with Kendrick Lamar, announcing the release of Oxnard. Upon release in November, the reception to Oxnard was warm, but nowhere near the heights of Malibu. Criticisms were focused on the rap-focused production and song structures that didn’t seem to fit Paak’s strengths. Many thought of the album as only a brief diversion from a still exciting career, and his tour following the album continued his reputation as a top tier performer.

Early in 2019, Paak started to do interviews in which he seemed to distance himself ever so slightly from the production of Oxnard and begin to move forward to the next project. He said that he let Dr. Dre have tight control on the sound, and continually referenced the amount of unreleased work they had together.

At the end of February, Paak revealed that much of that extra work would be released in a second album, Ventura. He says that Dre gave him significantly more say in the production and took a backseat to Paak’s vision. He also said that the sound of the album would move away from the rap that filled Oxnard.

Upon release, the sound of Ventura was all it was cracked up to be, full of R&B, funk and soul. Rap is near absent from the track list, besides a blistering verse from Andre 3000. Reception was more positive than that of Oxnard, but still not to the height of Malibu. This begs the question, after three years, and two albums with the help of one of the most well-regarded and famous producers in the world, why can’t Anderson Paak replicate past success?

First, let’s be clear, Malibu is a very high bar to reach. And it’s always hard to make a similar splash after a debut or breakthrough album. This is especially relevant with Malibu, who’s sound was especially unique in the rap scene when it was released. Paak had been perfecting his craft for years before he broke through, and the struggle of getting there was on display through the album. It’s hard to write about the struggle once you’re out of it.

But for the sake of argument, and with the “data” (Paak’s past two releases) available, let’s brainstorm for a minute. Let’s start with Oxnard. Upon re-listening, there are some standout moments on the album, specifically Tints and 6 Summers. Moments like these and others show the potential we expected of a Paak — Dr. Dre collaboration. There was also the Bubblin’ single release well before Oxnard that kind of revealed the name of the album. There are clear highlights to pull from Oxnard, that listeners can pull and drop into a playlist.

For Ventura, the main downside is that the album feels a bit safe for Paak. It’s known that Paak can make an R&B/soul album with enough quality that will differentiate him from his rap peers, but it’s his combination of rap and this sound that makes him such a successful crossover artist.

So, what if he combined the albums? 12 or 14 tracks from the combined track listings of Oxnard and Ventura would be a better project than either of those that he released. Interestingly enough, there are signs that this was the initial plan. Paak revealed that he came to Dre with the idea to do two albums, with Dre saying, “you have a lot of work to do.” In an Instagram live video before Oxnard was released, Dre accidentally revealed the title as Oxnard Ventura, which would seem like a combination of the two.

Why did Paak decide the separate the work then? At this point, we’re stuck to speculate. The first thing that comes to mind would be a desire from Paak’s to “release the music”. I’m sure that Paak and Dre made many more songs than what have been released in the past year (Paak says 65,000) and Paak just wants to release the work he’s spent so much time on. This makes sense, for a performer and entertainer like Paak, he wants people to react to his work, and he probably wants to perform that work.

It doesn’t seem that the double album release strategy was a ploy to increase streaming numbers, because the album isn’t long enough. The streaming hack is something that many artists have taken advantage of in recent years, Drake’s Scorpion and Migos’ Culture II come to mind. If Paak wanted to chart higher, he would have released the two albums as one, totaling 25 songs. He could have released them separately in order to go on two different tours supporting the album (which he is doing), but after Malibu, he seems to have no problems finding gigs.

One last alternative that Paak could have considered was releasing Oxnard Ventura and releasing a successive “B-Sides” album. It’s a practice that has diminished in the streaming era due to the low charting potential of the B-Side albums, but I think the template has potential in the single era we are rapidly approaching. Listeners love grabbing songs out of projects and adding them to playlists. With proper promotion, I think that could be an upside of a B-side project, which doesn’t have the cohesive pressure of a studio album release. While he may be on a higher bar than Paak now, we saw this work for Kendrick Lamar on Untitled Unmastered, an album made up of loosies from To Pimp a Butterfly.

In all, it would be disingenuous to call this a failed release cycle for Paak, he charted higher than he ever has before, and will continue to sell out shows across the country. However, it’s interesting to dissect the decisions that go into releasing music, and for an artist with Paak’s proven quality, sometimes it’s important to go beyond a simple musical critique.