{"id":295612,"date":"2026-02-13T07:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T07:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/295612\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T07:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T07:21:07","slug":"choosing-happy-is-a-hell-of-a-process-thundercat-on-funk-lost-friends-and-being-fired-by-snoop-dogg-possibly-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/295612\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Choosing happy is a hell of a process\u2019: Thundercat on funk, lost friends and being fired by Snoop Dogg (possibly) | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is an overcast Thursday afternoon at the end of January, and Thundercat<\/a> is telling me about the time he tried to interest Snoop Dogg in the mid-70s oeuvre of Frank Zappa. He wasn\u2019t Thundercat then, he explains. He was still Stephen Bruner, bass player for hire, who had fetched up in what he calls a \u201cstupid-as-hell, Rick James-level band\u201d backing the venerable rapper, packed with Los Angeles jazz luminaries who would later contribute to Kendrick Lamar\u2019s To Pimp a Butterfly: Kamasi Washington, Josef Leimberg, Terrace Martin. Alas, their jazz chops were sometimes deemed surplus to requirements. At one point, while Bruner was playing an expansive bass solo on stage, Snoop sidled up to him and flatly announced: \u201cAin\u2019t nobody told you to play all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

So perhaps it was in the spirit of horizon-broadening that Bruner took it upon himself to play Snoop the song St Alfonzo\u2019s Pancake Breakfast, a knotty, marimba-heavy slice of jazz-rock from Zappa\u2019s 1974 album Apostrophe, which switches time signatures three times in less than two minutes, and features lyrics about a man stealing margarine and urinating on a bingo card. \u201cYeah, I hit him with the rollercoaster,\u201d Bruner chuckles. \u201cHe was smoking, and he almost ate his blunt, saying: \u2018What the hell is going on?\u2019 I said: \u2018My sentiments exactly.\u2019 I think I did a cartwheel after that and left the band: I played Snoop Dogg St Alfonzo\u2019s Breakfast, my job is done here, I have no more work to do.\u201d He thinks for a moment. \u201cOr maybe I got fired: \u2018Get out of here dude, you\u2019re too weird.\u2019 I forget. It was a great moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In London, January 2026. Photograph: Ollie Tikare\/The Guardian; Assistant: Eddie Davies<\/p>\n

This, it becomes apparent as we attempt to discuss his forthcoming fifth album, is a very Thundercat kind of anecdote, involving one of the impossibly eclectic cast of musicians he has worked with over his career: he is presumably the only person in history who can claim to have played with Ariana Grande and Herbie Hancock<\/a>, and to have been in an early 00s boyband (No Curfew<\/a>, briefly big in Germany) and the gnarly thrash metal institution Suicidal Tendencies. You get the impression he wasn\u2019t terribly happy as a member of the former: \u201cI\u2019m a working-class musician, man, and that was what it meant for me at the age of 14\u201d. He spent nine years in the latter, however, powering his way through songs called Widespread Bloodshed and We\u2019re F\u2019n Evil. (It\u2019s worth noting that he was also working with Erykah Badu at the same time.)<\/p>\n

Playing with the thrash-metal band Suicidal Tendencies at Hammerfest, Prestatyn, in 2010. Photograph: Metal Hammer\/Future\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

He looks puzzled when I ask if he can think of any musical situation in which he would feel uncomfortable playing. \u201cWhatever brain disposition that lets you know you\u2019re in a dangerous situation, I don\u2019t think I have,\u201d he says, shrugging. \u201cI think constantly performing has allowed that to not be such a problematic thing to me. What\u2019s that saying? \u2018Luck is just preparation met with opportunity\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, the Snoop story also involves a dramatic and improbable collision of genres, very much Thundercat\u2019s stock in trade. He says his transition from multipurpose sideman to solo artist in the early 2010s felt strangely natural to him, maybe because the music he started making was as strange and eclectic as the list of artists on his CV. His solo albums to date have piloted a wildly zigzagging path between funk, jazz-fusion, electronic pop, yacht rock, hip-hop, psychedelia, punk and chiptune, among other things, all of it lavishly decorated with the kind of extravagant bass solos that so upset Snoop Dogg.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t really work, but it does, perhaps because the bizarre stylistic cocktails never seem forced, but a natural extension of his impossibly catholic tastes. Over the course of our afternoon, he goes from enthusing wildly about Leon Ware\u2019s mid-70s masterpiece of sophisticated soul Musical Massage<\/a>, to explaining the Lydian mode<\/a>, to demonstrating a clearly encyclopaedic knowledge of the work of Chick Corea, to earnestly discussing the \u201creally innovative\u201d oeuvre of Limp Bizkit. He thinks his musical tastes are down to his parents, both musicians \u2013 his dad drummed with the Temptations \u2013 and ardent believers that categorising music was just a marketing tool, an idea that clearly seeped in on a very deep level. By the time he was a teenager, he was as enamoured of Slipknot and Korn<\/a> as he was of the Billy Cobham<\/a> and George Duke<\/a> albums his parents played, or the jazz artists he and Washington were sneaking in, underage, to see in LA clubs.<\/p>\n

Clearly Thundercat is a pop star unlike any other, although you don\u2019t need to know his backstory to work that out: you just have to look at him. Today in London, despite having recently landed from LA, he is dressed in typically head-turning style: voluminous corduroy trousers, shirt featuring a kind of 19th-century military brocade, trainers decorated with metallic skeleton toes, and dip-dyed dreadlocks held back from his face by a pair of enormous silver grips featuring snarling tigers. Perhaps worried that this might look insufficiently arresting, he has accessorised with a huge metallic breastplate bearing the logo of the cartoon alien felines from whom he took his name. He is an obsessive fan of cartoons, comic books and science fiction and peppers his conversation with references to manga and video games, a couple of them so obscure that I have to look them up when I get home.<\/p>\n

Whatever brain disposition that lets you know you\u2019re in a dangerous situation, I don\u2019t think I have<\/p>\n

He tells me that his \u201cgreatest moment ever\u201d was getting a cameo role as a man with a robotic hand in the Star Wars TV series The Book of Boba Fett<\/a>. \u201cI can use that in an argument every time somebody gets too high and mighty: \u2018Hey, you can\u2019t talk to me like that, I was in Star Wars!\u2019\u201d he nods. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t one of those never meet your heroes moments. You can\u2019t ruin Star Wars for me. Certain characters and certain principles it was created off are timeless, they still stand. The struggle between dark and light, what is considered dark and what is considered light; the Force, which is like flatulence basically.\u201d He notes my baffled expression and smiles. \u201cIt\u2019s all about how you choose to use it, man. Maybe as a weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen Bruner as the Modifier in The Book of Boba Fett. Photograph: Capital Pictures\/Alamy<\/p>\n

But he hasn\u2019t stopped off in London to discuss Star Wars. Bruner has a new album, Distracted, which seems to be head-spinning business as usual: smooth soft-rock piano ballads abut house tracks, A$AP Rocky raps over a beat that owes as much to shoegaze as to hip-hop, while both Lil Yachty and defiantly retro indie duo the Lemon Twigs are also in the supporting cast.<\/p>\n

Not for the first time in his career, the eclecticism is so diverting that it\u2019s initially easy to miss how fraught and downcast a lot of the songs are: 2011\u2019s The Golden Age of Apocalypse<\/a> mourned the drug-related death of his friend and collaborator Austin Peralta; his 2017 breakthrough Drunk probed his problematic relationship with alcohol, while Distracted\u2019s predecessor, It Is What It Is<\/a> was consumed with grief over the death of his \u201cbest friend\u201d, rapper Mac Miller<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard putting out an album being compared to postpartum depression<\/p>\n

He says It Is What It Is was particularly difficult to make \u2013 \u201cThere was a lot of trauma linked to it, a lot of pain\u201d \u2013 compounded by the fact that it was released at the height of lockdown. \u201cI\u2019ve heard putting out an album being compared to postpartum depression \u2013 you have such an attachment to this thing because of how much you obsess about it, then you put it out and then there\u2019s this kind of weird feeling of loneliness. And because of fucking Covid, It Is What It Is came out to complete silence, like: drop the album and go sit in darkness, see if you can amp the pain up some more.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot going on at the time that album came out, and just having to sit with it, I couldn\u2019t \u2026 I would almost, like, vomit at the thought of it. But ultimately, when I look back, I\u2019m very grateful for the chance to have sat down, because to have to go on stage and deal with it night after night, say goodbye to my friends over and over again, would have been another traumatising experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thundercat at FYF Fest 2017 in Los Angeles. Photograph: Rich Fury\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Instead of touring, Bruner took stock. He gave up drinking and took up boxing training with such dedication that \u201ceven my trainers wonder what the hell I\u2019m doing sometimes: \u2018Hey, are you training for a fight or something?\u2019\u201d He gives a mordant chuckle. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018You mean world war three, because that seems to be on?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He says the new album is \u201ca bit of a diary, my thought processing\u201d, and it seems to relate to the soul-searching he did in the aftermath of the release of It Is What Is. There are songs about his capacity for self-sabotage, about failed relationships, about his suspicion that some of his more erratic behaviour might be the result of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, although he isn\u2019t diagnosed. \u201cI think that it\u2019s a byproduct of the environment, as most sicknesses are,\u201d he says. \u201cWe got cell phones, we got microtransactions, you use your brain in 30-second bursts, and you\u2019re going to adjust to that even if you don\u2019t want to. And even if it was something you could get diagnosed, it\u2019s like, I\u2019m 40 years old, and I didn\u2019t die so far. And I know not one creative person whose brain isn\u2019t of that nature. It comes with the territory. So I guess it\u2019s somewhere along the lines of a superpower.\u201d<\/p>\n

The album also returns to the late Miller, who appears on She Knows Too Much, a track the pair recorded in Malibu some years before Miller\u2019s death. No, Bruner says, it wasn\u2019t weird returning to the recording and hearing his late friend\u2019s voice booming around the studio again. The tracks that address Miller\u2019s death on It Is What It Is were consumed by an almost paralysing misery: \u201cSo hard to get over it, I tried to get under it, I\u2019m stuck in between,\u201d he sang on the title track.<\/p>\n

\u2018Stand still too long, somebody\u2019s going to hit you with something\u2019 \u2026Thundercat. Photograph: Ollie Tikare\/The Guardian; Assistant: Eddie Davies<\/p>\n

But She Knows Too Much \u2013 a buoyant funk-fuelled track that finds Miller in his first flush of mega-fame, reflecting on his new celebrity in witty, earthy terms \u2013 offered a reminder of when they made it. \u201cIt was the funniest shit ever,\u201d says Bruner. \u201cIt was hilarious, I remember it viscerally. I like to describe Mac almost like he was a one-man Rat Pack. When I would see him, I would somehow feel like we were supposed to be wearing suits. Like weird, highbrow bullshit and shenanigans. And tomfoolery! That\u2019s what we were up to. It\u2019s just a clear picture of who we were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bruner says Distracted is \u201cthe sound of me choosing happy\u201d. If it occasionally sounds troubled or downcast, well, \u201cchoosing happy is a hell of a process\u201d.<\/p>\n

And, indeed, he does seem happy, joking about his new album having to compete with Cardi B \u2013 \u201cI got to get myself a fatter ass, I got to get a BBL\u201d \u2013 enthusing about a forthcoming visit to Paris fashion week.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s weird, he says: for all the changes that his career has gone through, it doesn\u2019t feel that different from his early days when he was playing weddings or, later, in Suicidal Tendencies. \u201cMy main memory is thinking if I stood still for too long, I\u2019d get hit with a beer can. I think the same principle applies. Actually, I think that principle applies to every stage of life: stand still too long, somebody\u2019s going to hit you with something.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that, he shakes my hand and heads off into the London dusk, breastplate clanking a little as he goes, heads understandably turning as he passes.<\/p>\n

Distracted is released 3 April on Brainfeeder. The single I Did This to Myself (ft Lil Yachty) is out now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is an overcast Thursday afternoon at the end of January, and Thundercat is telling me about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-295612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}