How Anderson .Paak’s Son Inspired His Directorial Debut, ‘K-Pops!’

During the depths of the pandemic, musician Anderson .Paak helped his son, Soul Rasheed, start a YouTube channel.

Now, the pair are starring alongside each other in .Paak’s directorial debut, “K-Pops!,” which is set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The film follows BJ (.Paak), a washed-up musician trying to pave his path to stardom. He finds a gig with a house band in Seoul for a K-Pop competition show, where he discovers that his long-lost son Tae Young (Rasheed) is also pursuing a music career.

.Paak sat down with Variety to talk about his directorial and screenwriting debut, how Bruno Mars taking the lead on directing Silk Sonic videos inspired him to pursue directing and working with his son on the film.

How did you decide that you wanted to explore directing?

I have a lot of siblings, and we would just watch movies and imitate them. Me and my oldest sister, we would make mini home movies, just imitating movies we saw. And when I got into high school, one of the electives they had was film editing. And that’s when I just really got into editing and making films.

It was when I started working with Silk Sonic, I realized I could be directing my own stuff. I saw how hands-on Bruno [Mars] was with all his visuals, and I was like, “Dude, I need to do my own stuff.”

When I was in quarantine, my son was into YouTube and wanted to be YouTuber. He showed me his page, he was doing video game tutorials. And I was like, “We should do some skits.” So, we started doing some skits, and I started getting super into it. And it brought me back to when I was doing video editing and stuff.

I was staying up all late, editing his videos. It just got me wanting to write a script. And pretty much that was the genesis of the whole movie. By then I was making more music videos, and I was telling everybody, “I want to really dive into this, get better at it.” He kind of really brought me back to that passion.

I just got obsessed. And I was like “What if I made a script for us?” This could be funny.

Where did the idea for the plot come from?

From working with my son in quarantine, I’d seen that my whole house was obsessed with K-Pop, with BTS and groups like that. I was kind of like the odd man out, I was always the guy being like “OK, you know about BTS, but what do you know about BET? What do you know about Tupac?” I was like, “I need to see what this is all about. Shit, I’m a musician too. I could probably link up with BTS.”

I started seeing just how much you do for the approval of your children. That’s how it started: I was just like well shit, I’m gonna try to write something.

You co-wrote the screenplay with Khaila Amazan. What was that like?

It was one of the hardest things I ever did. I learned so much. I wrote it with Khaila, a really talented writer. She studied film, and was really good with teaching me structure and how to build a story. I think we had a really good chemistry, because I knew how I wanted the dialogue to be, and pacing and everything like that.

I think our styles combined, it was really cool. But the process was crazy. I never spent so much time developing a script and then rewriting. Up until we were filming, I was still changing stuff and trying to make stuff better. I think it made for just a better story, and it helped me as an actor, because I had such a good understanding of the script that I was able to make it mine, make it more natural.

Before going into the whole filming process, did you give your son any advice or guidance?

I just kept asking him, “You still want to do this, right? Cause I can go on tour now. We ain’t making no money off this stuff yet, so just let me know if you really want to do this.”

And he was just like, “I better do it! I’ve been in freaking acting classes and choreo classes for months.” I was like alright, we gotta do it. I gotta lead by example.

I was just making sure you he was comfortable and checking up on him. It was just like, “You let me know if there’s anything you need, anything that you don’t want to do, just talk to me and I’ll handle it.” Just letting him know that nothing’s more important than you and me. I got your back. He’s my little rider. He healed me, because I was stressed. I was dealing with a lot, so he was the least stressful part.

What does it feel like to have your movie premiere at TIFF?

It’s huge. I was so nervous about even submitting. I’ve never even really been to any movie festivals. I just didn’t know what to expect. Just to know that it got accepted and that they enjoyed it, it was huge.