Anderson .Paak Releases ‘K-POPS!’, Featuring Collaborations with 17 K-pop Stars

The nine-time Grammy winner Anderson .Paak released his album ‘K-POPS! (Music from and inspired by K-POPS! Motion Picture)’ on the 29th, featuring a large number of Korean pop stars.

Comprising 17 tracks, this album is regarded not as a simple movie soundtrack but as a high-quality studio album in which Anderson .Paak personally participated in production and composition. Dem Jointz served as the executive producer.

The list of collaborators includes many prominent artists from the K-pop industry. Key members from groups such as G-DRAGON, aespa, SEVENTEEN’s Joshua, ATEEZ’s Hongjoong, and (G)I-DLE’s Soyeon took part. Legends of South Korea’s R&B and hip-hop scenes like Jay Park, DEAN, Crush, and CHUNG HA are also included, along with American rapper JID and Japanese boy band JO1.

The music video for ‘Caution’ (a collaboration with NMIXX) was released simultaneously with the album. This track combines heavy bass with R&B and pop melodies, and in the video, Anderson .Paak and NMIXX appear as stylish crime investigators.

The album includes previously released singles. The track ‘Keychain’ featuring aespa was published in February, along with ‘Aftertaste (Inspired by the Original Motion Picture K-POPS!)’ made with DEAN. It also features a new version of ‘Too Bad’ released in 2025 with G-DRAGON; that song reached position 30 on the Billboard Global 200 chart and position 12 on the Global Excl. U.S. chart, and it won a MAMA Award last year.

The album is the soundtrack for the film of the same name, ‘K-POPS!’, which marks Anderson .Paak’s directorial debut on Netflix. The film was released simultaneously on Netflix on the 29th. In the movie, Anderson .Paak plays the character BJ, a musician at the end of his career who tries to revive his musical career through a Korean K-pop survival show. There, he meets Tae Young (played by actor Soul Rasheed), one of the contestants, and the evolving relationship between the two as father and son forms the core of the film.