The J. Cole & Anderson Paak Show

Opening at the Erwin Center on Friday, Oxnard MC Anderson Paak testified “Am I Wrong” with a cool conviction, stating, “I believe in fate.” Once homeless with a family in tow, the 31-year-old rapper caught his break via six featured tracks on Dr. Dre’s Compton and his Grammy-nominated sophomore album, 2016’s Malibu.

Anderson Paak (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

Presenting some James Brown bandleader skills, his fivepiece offered chicken funk in “Come Down,” Motown cool with “Put Me Thru,” and genuine soul on “The Season/Carry Me.” NxWorries’ collaboration “Suede” hopped the singer back on drums, where he beat out impressive double stops and fills – both flashbacks to his days keeping time for a gospel choir. Forty-five minutes could’ve doubled with no one minding more Paak.

J. Cole being led onstage (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, J. Cole made his entrance surrounded by police officers escorting him through the crowd to the stage. Released from his shackles, the rapper stood on a platform bordered by barbed wire, light posts, and surveillance cameras. From this jail cell, Cole began his 90-minute set with an impassioned slew of cuts from his fourth and latest album, 4 Your Eyez Only: “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Immortal,” “Deja Vu,” and “Ville Mentality,” which earned a thunderous chant to the hook’s angst.

None of it echoed the adolescent fantasies of losing one’s virginity and the white picket fences that lined his 2014 breakout, 2014 Forest Hills Drive. Focusing on the life of a slain friend, 4 Your Eyez Only weighs down with a parental anxiety and moral quandaries accentuated by dim lights and a contemplative mood. Providing joyous respite were a trio of songs from 2011 debut Cole World: The Sideline Story – “Nobody’s Perfect,” “Can’t Get Enough,” and “Lights Please.”

Any levity proved short-lived.

Photo by David Brendan Hall

New tune “Neighbors,” recounting how a SWAT team raided his home on a tip only to find it filled with recording equipment, got delivered in the key of somber. Trafficking in sardonic humor over strings and jazzy instrumentalism (“I get this spidey sense around racist people … They just exude it to where my hair starts to stand up”), Cole narrated the unjust action as it played on the screen behind him.

“I guess having your friends over and making music is too much black activity,” he quipped. “Blacktivity.”

Though he was quick to add that he wasn’t home at the time of the incident, his lyrics painted the grim realities of being black in America, where racial stereotypes still rule the day (“The neighbors think I’m sellin’ dope”). It could make a man question his future: “Every nigga feel like a candidate for a Trayvon kinda fate/ Even when your plaques hang on a wall/ Even when the president jam your tape.”

Meanwhile, “Foldin Clothes,” a song about domestic life, demonstrated the North Carolina native’s greatest asset: sincerity. Supplemented by guitar shuffles and heartbeat bass, Cole declaimed the “simple things” of day-to-day existence, which ended with an ode to his daughter and wife, “She’s Mine Pt. 2.” Beneath a soft, languid tow of keys, his voice almost cracked, showcasing one of the most tender moments of the night.

While Jermaine Cole evinced shortcomings live, from lackluster punchlines to too-preachy soapboxing, he made up for it with an integrity that parallels him to the common man. He’s famous, but he identifies as one of us. Hard to disagree with him when a full house is singing in unison to “Wet Dreamz,” a song that recounts his having sex for the first time.