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NxWorries - the duo of Anderson .Paak & Knxwledge - is back with their long-awaited second album Why Lawd?.

Anderson .Paak and Knxwledge’s sly, smooth-talking rap&B sounds older and wiser these days. The duo’s stellar second album layers doubt and insecurity into jet-setting antics and featherbed-plush beats. NxWorries’ 2016 debut, Yes Lawd!, was as carefree as a new-age mack daddy rap&B album could be. The billowing thump of Knxwledge’s exhaustive backlog of beat tapes blended well with Paak’s scratchy croon-raps, somewhere between Joe Tex and Black Dynamite with a taste for vegan sausage. Eight years on, with higher individual profiles, how would NxWorries recapture that patent-leather Air Force sheen?

The sumptuous Why Lawd? not only succeeds, it expands their vision. The beats are more ambitious, the lyrics more thoughtful on subjects of affection, rejection, and coital bliss. They sound as enamored with having loved and lost as with the future joys and miseries just over the horizon.

The two of them could’ve used nostalgia to coast on the legacy of their nearly decade-old debut to turn in a serviceable redux. Instead, Why Lawd? leans into a rawness and fear Yes Lawd! only hinted at. No one is immune to getting curved. Loneliness can supersede all the money and hook-ups in the world.

Putting that reality front and center is a bold shift from the first album’s devil-may-care attitude, and makes for caramel-rich music that nods to the duo’s idols while forging its own groove. “Who would ever think that we’d find a hole in the system?” Paak asks over a rattling drum break and guitar riff on “Battlefield,” a song that begins with assured autobiography and ends with a joke involving a fling that lasts barely as long as a Dodgers game. Leave it to NxWorries to find the beauty in the bruises. — (via Pitchfork)

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Label: Stones Throw Records
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 2024
Genre: Hip Hop
Style: Soul

File under: Stones Throw Records
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