Anderson .Paak and Cordae put out their joint album Heavy Is the Crown on Friday, October 23, and so far the public has heard exactly one song from it. That single, “A Good Day,” had drawn 4,115,318 views on .Paak’s official channel by Monday, October 19, roughly a month after its video went live on Wednesday, September 16.
The official video credits the release to “APESHIT + EMPIRE / Hi Level + Mass Appeal.” Apeshit is the imprint .Paak launched with Universal Music Group in November 2021, so this is a record both artists can claim as their own house project rather than a guest spot on someone else’s album.
Seven years from “RNP” to a full album
The pairing is not new, and the paper trail explains why an album made sense. Their four releases together so far:
- 2019: “RNP,” a J. Cole production on Cordae’s debut The Lost Boy. It went gold in the US, reached No. 4 on New Zealand’s Hot Singles chart and stalled at No. 15 on the US Bubbling Under chart, just outside the Hot 100.
- 2023: “Two Tens,” again produced by J. Cole, which reached No. 74 in Canada.
- 2024: “Summer Drop,” from Cordae’s third album The Crossroads.
- 2026: “A Good Day,” the lead single from Heavy Is the Crown.
What has actually been confirmed about the album is thin. The announcement graphic shared on August 19 named J. Cole, 9th Wonder, Conductor Williams and Swizz Beatz as collaborators, followed by “& more.” A full tracklist with producer and writer credits had not been published in anything we could check by Monday. The artwork riffs on the 2008 comedy Step Brothers, and pre-orders cover vinyl, cassette and CD.
Two of those names have history with .Paak. 9th Wonder contributed to .Paak’s 2016 album Malibu, and J. Cole appeared on his 2018 album Oxnard before producing both of the duo’s earlier collaborations.
Two very different scorecards
.Paak arrives with nine Grammy wins: one in 2019 for “Bubblin,” two in 2020 for Ventura and “Come Home,” one in 2021 for “Lockdown,” four in 2022 with Bruno Mars as Silk Sonic for “Leave the Door Open,” including Record and Song of the Year, and one in 2025 for Why Lawd? with Knxwledge. “Leave the Door Open” was also his first No. 1 on the Hot 100.
Cordae, 29, has a steeper curve. The Lost Boy (July 26, 2019) peaked at No. 13 on the US albums chart and earned nominations for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song at the 2020 Grammys. From a Birds Eye View (January 14, 2022) matched that No. 13 peak. The Crossroads (November 15, 2024) reached only No. 143. A joint record with a nine-time Grammy winner is, among other things, a chance to reset that trend.
The “A Good Day” video: what it does and does not tell us
The clip was directed by Dave Meyers, with SHOTCLOCK as production company, and runs 4 minutes 17 seconds. Meyers is a familiar choice: he also directed the video for .Paak’s 2020 single “Lockdown,” the song that won him the Grammy for Best Melodic Rap Performance.
The view count is respectable rather than explosive. Spread over the 33 days since upload, 4,115,318 views works out to about 124,700 a day (4,115,318 divided by 33). The rollout started with a 20-second teaser in which the pair dressed as old men chatting outside a house, a gag that matches the album’s comedy-inspired cover.
The criticism is about scope, not quality. The description box works hard as a storefront, with a pre-save link, physical pre-orders and a tool for fans to generate their own album cover, yet the clip remains the only full song attached to an album that lists J. Cole and Swizz Beatz. Listeners are being asked to buy into the project mostly on the strength of the duo’s history and one track. That is a reasonable bet given “RNP” went gold, but it leaves the guest verses and producer credits as Friday’s unknowns.
.Paak’s own calendar is crowded around the release. He has spent 2026 opening Bruno Mars’ The Romantic Tour as DJ Pee .Wee, and his official channel lists dates at BC Place in Vancouver on October 20 and 21, two and three days before the album lands, followed by a show at Mercer Labs in New York on October 31.
Further reading
Image: Bruce from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
