More than a decade on from their first collaboration, Anderson .Paak and Korean alt-R&B artist DEAN have linked back up. "Aftertaste," out now, is their first joint release since "Put My Hands On You" in 2015 – and it lands as part of a growing body of work tied to .Paak's feature film directorial debut, K-POPS!, which hits Netflix on May 30.

Produced by Dem Jointz, whose credits span Jennie and Eminem, the track moves on hard-hitting drums and soft synth strings. DEAN handles the seduction from a distance; .Paak goes more direct. It's club-ready and bedroom-adjacent in equal measure, and the chemistry that made their 2015 record click is still clearly there.

.Paak’s February release "Keychain" featured aespa – genre-fluid production, a different kind of collaboration entirely. "Aftertaste" pulls from the Korean underground's alt-R&B lineage instead. DEAN has spent a decade building a reputation that sits well outside the idol system: a COLORS SHOW appearance in 2017, a comeback single that hit No. 1 on Melon within an hour of release in 2023, a 2024 double-single with FKJ. The two collabs don't sound alike, and that's the point.

K-POPS! – which .Paak wrote, directed, and stars in alongside his son Soul Rasheed – is set around a Seoul K-pop competition show and turns on themes of generational connection and cultural exchange. The film is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The album forming around it is shaping up to reflect the same cross-cultural range the film trades in, drawing on .Paak's own Black and Korean heritage rather than reducing Korean music to a single sound or scene.

"Aftertaste" is streaming now. K-POPS! arrives on Netflix May 30.