Oct 28, 2026 · Album review · 9 min read

Anderson .Paak & Cordae “Heavy Is the Crown” Review: Producers, Samples and Verdict

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Seven years after “RNP”, Anderson .Paak and Cordae made the full album: 11 tracks, 32 minutes, beats from J. Cole, 9th Wonder, Conductor Williams and Swizz Beatz. Here are the producers, the samples, the best songs, what critics said and our verdict.

Short answer: Heavy Is the Crown is the first full joint album from Anderson .Paak and Cordae, released on October 23, 2026 through APESHIT + EMPIRE / Hi Level + Mass Appeal. It has 11 tracks in just under 32 minutes and no guest verses. The beats come from J. Cole, 9th Wonder, Conductor Williams, Swizz Beatz, FnZ and Hollywood Cole, among others, and the lead single “A Good Day” is built on Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day”. It is a short, funny, warm rap record about brotherhood and the weight of success: the chemistry is real, and the second half is better than the first.

Seven years after “RNP”, the two finally made the album fans kept asking for. Here is how they got here, who produced what, the samples, the best songs, what critics said and our verdict from a producer’s chair.

How Anderson .Paak and Cordae got here

The story starts with “RNP”, released on July 23, 2019, three days before Cordae’s debut The Lost Boy. J. Cole produced it, and the song turned a young Maryland rapper and a drummer-singer from Oxnard into a duo people wanted more of. The Lost Boy reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 2020 Grammys.

They came back together twice on Cordae’s second album cycle, both times over J. Cole beats: “Two Tens” (January 25, 2023) and “Summer Drop” (August 28, 2024), which ended up on The Crossroads (November 15, 2024). They also shared stages, including the BET Awards.

Meanwhile .Paak kept stacking trophies: four Grammys for Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open” with Bruno Mars, and Best Progressive R&B Album at the 2025 Grammys for NxWorries’ Why Lawd? with Knxwledge. Cordae’s last album, The Crossroads, peaked at No. 143. So the title cuts both ways: one of them has the crown and one is still reaching for it, and the album is about what that weight feels like for both.

Who produced Heavy Is the Crown?

The label’s release notes, reproduced by Rolling Stone Australia and Mixtape Madness, give these track credits:

The rest is less clear. Two outlets (Panic39 and That Love Podcast) credit Hollywood Cole with “A Good Day”, and the credits list shared before release also named Soul Rasheed & Caleb Oh and The Collective, without saying on which songs. Full per-track credits for “58th Floor”, “Airbender”, “Days Go By” and “Days Like This” had not been published in one place when we wrote this, so we are not guessing.

Note the J. Cole thread: he produced “RNP”, “Two Tens” and “Summer Drop”, the three songs that made this album possible, and he is back for “Karma Tax”.

What does “A Good Day” sample?

“A Good Day” is built on Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day”, the opening track of his 1977 album Menagerie and one of the most recognizable soul records ever made. On top of it, the hype man ad-libs are the late Fatman Scoop’s, lifted from Mariah Carey’s “It’s Like That” (2005), and the title and a couple of lines nod to Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” (1993). The Culture Crypt and The Heights also catch a Nas reference.

The video, directed by Dave Meyers and starring Jennifer Freeman (My Wife and Kids), is a homage to Friday: .Paak and Cordae play brothers chasing the same girl around the block. It passed 4.2 million YouTube views in about six weeks, and Rolling Stone Australia reports the song reached the Top 25 at rhythmic radio.

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Anderson .Paak, Cordae – A Good Day (Official Video, dir. Dave Meyers)

If you want the source, Menagerie is available on vinyl and CD. “Lovely Day” is the first song on the record.

Track by track: the highlights

• “58th Floor”: opens with a phone-call skit, .Paak introducing Cordae, then switches into a harder, ’90s-flavored beat. It sets the tone: jokes first, bars right after.
• “Airbender”: 88 seconds of tight trading over chopped strings. The Heights calls it one of the best moments; The Arts Desk found the strings irritating. You will know in ten seconds which side you are on.
• “I’m On”: the FnZ and Hollywood Cole beat has an odd, drummer’s swing, and both rappers attack it. Ratings Game Music gave it 4.5/5.
• “A Good Day”: the single and the friendliest song here. It works on the radio and in the video; on the album it is the most obvious moment.
• “Days Go By”: a looped melody and relaxed drums under the most socially pointed verses on the record, looking back at childhood and the violence around it.
• “Crown”: the title track and Conductor Williams’ beat, with gospel voices pitched up and a beat switch. .Paak’s drum fills are all over it.
• “Days Like This”: Ratings Game Music’s favorite song, with what they call maybe the best beat on the project. .Paak swings between bragging and real anxiety about where he stands in the industry.
• “Helpless”: the emotional center. Cordae raps about his mother taking his ex’s side; .Paak admits he showed up drunk to his child’s birthday party. The Heights calls it one of the best songs of .Paak’s whole catalog.
• “Godfather II”: Swizz Beatz on the beat and the ad-libs, sharp one-liners and a closing statement about legacy.

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Anderson .Paak, Cordae – Helpless (Official Visualizer)

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Anderson .Paak, Cordae – Crown (Official Visualizer, prod. Conductor Williams)

Heavy Is the Crown tracklist

Listen to Heavy Is the Crown

Spotify

Apple Music

Is Heavy Is the Crown on vinyl?

Yes, and in more versions than most rap albums this year. Spin counted six retailer-exclusive vinyl variants (Amazon and independent shops; record stores list a gray and pink indie exclusive), an animated zoetrope edition sold only on the official store, a CD with a lenticular cover that shows the two fighting when you tilt it, and a cassette. Rolling Stone Australia adds an alternate-cover vinyl with art by Lauren Halsey, also sold through the official site. The standard black LP and the CD are on Amazon (the boxes under the cover and at the end of this review link to the exact listings).

Is Heavy Is the Crown good? What the critics say

• Clash (8/10): less a meeting of two artists than a conversation between brothers; cohesive, and at its best when it looks past success to growing up and giving back.
• The Culture Crypt (8.0/10): warm hip hop stitched together with soul, with real comic timing; “Helpless” is the standout.
• Ratings Game Music (4/5): creative, polished and full of personality; favorites “Days Like This”, “I’m On”, “A Good Day”, “58th Floor” and “Helpless”.
• Mixtape Madness: “a very, very solid rap project”, with beat selection that takes it up a notch.
• The Arts Desk (3 stars): energetic but uneven; the samples in the first half are not well integrated, the second half is stronger.
• The Heights (3/5): strong start, a repetitive middle, too much gloating; “A Good Day” is the weakest point and “Helpless” the best.

Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and the other big US outlets had not reviewed it at the time of writing, and its first-week Billboard 200 position was not out yet (the chart covering release week is published at the start of November).

A producer’s take

From the beatmaker’s chair, this album is a lesson in sample choice. “A Good Day” uses a record everybody knows; that gets you on the radio, but it also makes the hook hard to own, which is exactly what its critics point at. The best beats here go the other way: Conductor Williams on “Crown” takes gospel voices, pitches them up until they become texture and switches the beat halfway; 9th Wonder keeps “You’re Mine” warm and simple; FnZ lets strings and a soul loop breathe on “Helpless”. The less famous the source, the more the song belongs to the artists.

The other lesson is the drums. .Paak is a drummer first, and reviewers keep pointing at it: the fills on “Crown” and the uneven, drummer’s swing on “I’m On”, the kind of feel a grid-perfect pattern never gives you. If you program drums on an MPC, that is the reason to play pads by hand, keep some of the timing loose and use swing instead of quantizing everything to 100 %. Our guide to chopping samples on an MPC covers the first half of this (finding the loop and slicing it), and how to sample vinyl covers getting a record like Menagerie into your sampler in the first place.

GUIO makes boom bap and soul-sample beats on an Akai MPC Live III, which is the angle of this section. Nothing here comes from inside the sessions: only from the credits, the official audio and what the producers have said.

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Anderson .Paak & Cordae – A Good Day in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, with the Free Nationals

Verdict

Heavy Is the Crown does what a duo album should: it sounds like two friends in a room, not two schedules lined up by managers. At 32 minutes it never drags. The first half leans on jokes and a famous sample; the second half, from “Crown” to “Godfather II”, is where the album earns its title, with better beats and more honest writing. Critics agree on the main thing: the chemistry that made “RNP” work holds up over a whole album, and .Paak, between Silk Sonic and NxWorries, reminds you he can rap with anyone.

Start with “Days Like This”, “Crown” and “Helpless”, then go back to “58th Floor” and play it in order. For the rest of that week’s releases, see New Hip Hop This Week Vol. 004; for more .Paak, he is on “Kingpin (Knock Ya Head Off)” on Busta Rhymes and J Dilla’s DILLAGENCE II; and if you want more rap on wax, here are the best hip hop vinyl records to own.

How this review was made: written from the official release, the label’s notes and the official videos, with every fact (dates, credits, samples, chart history and formats) checked against the sources listed below. Where per-track credits are not public, we say so instead of guessing. GUIO is a hip hop producer, not an insider.