Thundercat

Thundercat has a new album coming out April 3, and it’s called Distracted, which is either the most honest title in his catalogue or a joke at his own expense, probably both. Stephen Bruner has built one of the more singular positions in contemporary music: a bassist of genuinely extraordinary technical facility who uses that facility in service of songs that are frequently absurdist, emotionally naked, and more fun than they have any right to be.

He came up in the Los Angeles jazz and soul underground, played with Erykah Badu and Flying Lotus before making his own records, and then became an unlikely star through his work with Kendrick Lamar on To Pimp a Butterfly. His bass on that record is one of the reasons it sounds the way it does, a living, breathing counterweight to the horns and the voice and the politics.

His solo records have been consistently inventive and increasingly willing to lean into the humor that runs through his sensibility. “Friend Zone” is a song about being in the friend zone. “Them Changes” is one of the saddest songs written in the last decade and also has a cartoon cat in the video. He once released a song called “Lone Wolf and Cub” that references the manga of the same name while also just being about grief. The combination of high musicianship and low culture signifiers isn’t a contradiction in his work. It’s the point.

Distracted follows 2020’s It Is What It Is, which won the Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album. Six years is a long gap for an artist who releases music at the pace of someone who can’t stop thinking about bass lines. Whatever distracted him, the wait seems to have been productive.

Distracted is out April 3.