10 years ago, genre-bending musical extraordinaire and Dr. Dre protégé Anderson .Paak was named to XXL Magazine’s Freshman Class, an annual platform meant to spotlight hip-hop’s most promising up-and-coming talent as they make a name for themselves on the rap scene. (Previous alumni include the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott and Lupe Fiasco.) With the annual magazine photoshoot comes a customary freestyle and cypher performance to show off the emerging talent, and while .Paak’s own cypher verse proved to mostly be an uncharacteristic misfire—to quote the artist who immediately followed him, “Did you say you fucked a fleshlight?”—it did end with one bit of cheeky, family-oriented braggadocio:
“My son is amazing / He look Korean, but he dance like MJ / He only in pre-K!”
Little could we know at the time that this seeming throwaway line in a subpar cypher—hold onto that piece of criticism, because full disclosure, this review will be flooded with .Paak praise—would serve as a piece of foreshadowing for the artist’s eventual jump to the big screen, as the singer-rapper-multi-instrumentalist gets to add a few more hyphens to his resumé as the writer-director-actor-producer of “K-Pops!,” a project that exists solely as a testament to three things: his Korean heritage, the bond he shares with his son, and the unlimited flow of charisma shining from his famously perfect teeth.
To embark on this homage, debuting filmmaker .Paak places all his chips on the only leading man he can trust; a budding talent named Anderson .Paak plays BJ, a resident bar band drummer and frontman with delusions of grandeur about his imminent breakaway success as an independent musician, more than content to foster this belief behind the same stage and in front of the same dwindling crowds week after week. One night in LA, in the early Obama days, one of BJ’s typical acts of boastful onstage swaggering brings him in the path of Yeji (Jee Young Han), a Korean-American who falls for his charms and, over the length of a cutesy animated montage, promptly leaves him when his arrogance proves immovably fixed on his music above anything and anyone else.
12 years then pass before BJ’s barroom antics are too much to handle, so the owner Cash (Jonnie Park) fires him before unloading a potential opportunity to reignite his chances at a music career: go to South Korea as a drummer on the popular talent contest “Wildcard,” and get in the good graces of season favourite Kang (Kevin Woo) to find his next launching pad towards a successful music career. The trip starts off unfocused until BJ happens to encounter low-ranked contestant Tae Young (Soul Rasheed), a charming, mixed-race 12-year-old who just so happens to be Yeji’s son.
It doesn’t take long for “K-Pops!” to then evolve into the typical story of reluctant found fatherhood fused together with the goal to win a culturally omnipresent talent competition, as BJ and Tae Young begin to form a camaraderie while the former does his best to pass on his talents and performative know-how onto his newly discovered kin. In that sense, the film basically exists in the “Pursuit of Happyness” vein of shameless father-son vanity projects; Rasheed is, indeed, .Paak’s own real-life son.
Fortunately—as one would hope to be the case—father and son do indeed have electric chemistry together (in case any of the lockdown-era Instagram skits they posted together back in 2020 didn’t reveal as much), so the film slides through its clichés with relative ease as a mere platform to show off endless star-power and an infectious love of Black music and culture.
If “K-Pops!” isn’t quite as engaged with the titular style of music as some of its more fervent fans would hope (or as concentrated on its own distinctive presentation as BJ is with his many lessons on performative showmanship), .Paak and cowriter Khaila Amazan give the characters enough dancing space between the musician’s own needle-drops to soak in the culture beyond mere exotic leering—or at least, point out that possibility for those in BJ’s initial position and headspace.
But what “K-Pops!” lacks in a more rounded view of K-pop as a musical mode, it more than makes up for in its leading orchestrator’s every self-initiated opportunity to show off how he can, in fact, do it all—a core tenet shared with just about any celebrated K-pop performer. It’s no exaggeration to suggest that Anderson .Paak is a generationally versatile musical talent with endless performing chops, and that rhythmic sense of timing proves more than useful in the film’s many comedic jabs; it’s safe to say the man who wrote “H.A.N.” and “Smokin’ Out the Window” would find every opportunity to throw a solid laugh between the nonstop showcases for his boundless skillset and accompanying magnetism.
And thankfully, the chance to spotlight Rasheed proves a worthy moment to show that rhythm runs in the family, with a requisite mall pampering montage/Earth, Wind and Fire(!!!) cameo performance letting the familial chemistry simmer like a refreshing sauna getaway before an electric stage performance.
As a result of this undeniable strength—inarguably the film’s greatest strength, in fact—it’s equally undeniable that “K-Pops!” isn’t quite fully formed as a character journey despite how endlessly watchable that character is; BJ’s arc of humbling proves both inevitable and sudden, as every instance of him showing off is accompanied by the nagging thought in your head that echoes “…But he really is that good, though!” Rare is the film whose most prominent deficiency is the excessive perfection of its lead, but with artistic skills as refined as Anderson .Paak’s, that one-in-a-million scenario befits a one-in-a-million talent.
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