Anderson Paak

I didn't start playing drums until I was 12, for school band; they didn't have any saxophones left. My step-pops had a kit at the house, and I had never done anything that I understood so quick. It was so natural. It was the most fun and consistent thing in my life.

As an artist, you're taking your experiences and placing them into your art. So the more experiences you have, the richer your art and more people can relate to it.

I grew up in Oxnard, CA, and I went to a church called St. Paul, where I was playing drums. My mom had a strawberry company. The whole town of Oxnard is basically built on produce, and more particularly, strawberries.

My mom eventually got out to Oxnard and started a produce company and was in the strawberry business. My pops was out of the picture by the time I was 7.

My story as an artist has been about trial and error. It's been about artist development, character building, struggle, happiness and failure, family, and music.

I just want people to be affected by the music. I'm really affected by my surroundings and put everything in my music - what I'm not getting and what I desire. I want it to be uncompromised... almost a spiritual thing.

The dot stands for 'detail' - always be paying attention to detail. I feel that people take you as serious as you take yourself. I spent a lot of time working on my craft, developing my style, and after I came out of my little incubation, I promised that I would pay attention to detail.

I had a project called 'Cover Art,' which was the first project I did under the new name Anderson .Paak. I went through this process where I was recording new music for about six months straight.

Not everything is going to be handed to you just because you're talented with a big smile. Sometimes you just gotta get out and shoot jumpers for hours and hours and hours. That's something I didn't really get a grasp on until way later, waking up early and treating it like a job if you're serious about it. Get the freak up and, you know, work.

A lot of people who work with Dre, you're lucky if anything sees the light of day.

I got invited to work on Dre's 'Compton' project.

I used to work with mentally disabled people when I was 18 or 19, changing diapers and catheters. I was working, like, 16 hour night shifts, having to distribute meds and go capture people who would break out of the house. Sometimes they'd have seizures, and we'd have to rush them to the hospital. That was an interesting time, very humbling.