Thundercat on his new album, ‘Distracted’

0:12Thundercat:Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. I am Fernando Augusto Pacheco and today I speak with musician Thundercat about his first album in six years, Distracted. With impressive collaborations, the album retains a funky-breeze delight and also a sense of grief and poignancy. Let's find out more.

0:57Thundercat:Stephen, what a pleasure. Welcome to Monaco Radio. I'm a big fan of your music, so I'm very happy. Happy to see you in person as well. Thank you for having me. And as a fan, we've waited six years for a new album. There was kind of a long gap. Is there any particular reason or were you really kind of wanting to have that perfect kind of combination of songs and wait a bit more? I think that it takes the time it takes to work on music. Sometimes I think that life has a way of being a reason or playing a reason in functionality or whatever is considerably of said things that are, you know, the stop and slow or the speed or the, you know, it's very relative to life.

1:41so I feel like nothing really just working on myself, working on life and at the same time you know it's just like the one phrase I held on through the process of working on this album was trusting the process.

1:54Thundercat:That sounds very good and let's talk about the title Distracted. Is it kind of a reflection about the world we live in where we are? We are distracted all the time you know there's so many kind of things coming our way, mobiles, traffic, everything literally right what was that kind of what you wanted to showcase as well with that title yeah a lot of me was very like the names of the albums kind of tend to show themselves as time progresses in the course of where there was many different ideas for what the album's name would be it would be thrown around jokingly all the time i think one of the titles was it's okay mom i didn't die that was what like I'm okay mom everything's fine but um totally like our day-to-day has been becoming more and more distracted and at the same time I also feel like there is a I don't know there's like a kind of a double-edged sword to what the meaning of distracted means for me I guess you know it also is very much indicative of sometimes you have to somewhat be distracted to like focus and for me i know that that's how it works for me sometimes so it's like as i've always there's hyper fixating on things but then but then there's like i don't know so i when i think of the word distracted and what it means to me it's kind of like i kind of laugh kind of like how did i get here so it's bigger than just kind of the exact meaning of the word i know i know yeah you know It's like, oh, the distractions, they will take you off your chorus.

3:27I'm like, is my chorus a distraction?

3:31Thundercat:Well, you're certainly not going to be distracted listening to your album because I think you have to kind of listen from the beginning. It's a bit of a side quest. What about, you worked with the producer, Greg Kirsten. Was it the first time you worked with him? Yeah, this is the first time me and Greg worked together. We created a whole lot of awesome music together for this project. And it came natural between how we would cohesively create the music. It was fun because me and him would just be silly a lot of the time. Greg is awesome. No, that's good. And I have to say, one of my favorite tracks in the album, She Knows Too Much.

4:23Thundercat:There's a powerful meaning of course, Mac Miller, you were best friends, you had a strong connection. That must have been felt very emotional to you to have that song in the album. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's still a lot to process, but I know that he's with me. And, you know, again, like it's just every time I hear it, I don't feel bad. I don't feel the weight of, you know, that moment that happened. But it's like when I hear us, I hear that's actually who we were. That's where that song kind of leaves me. Well, in that case, it's a celebration of his life in many ways. And one thing I've got to tell you, I love your collaborators because you work with very different people from different fields and I think that tells me a lot about your music.

5:07Thundercat:I've written down here because Thunder Wave, I love that song.

5:22Feels like I'm floating Just hold on a little longer Until we raise our show

5:37Thundercat:You know, the sounds that they make, it's a really fun track. Thank you. That was a collaboration with Willow as well. How do you see collaboration? Because you have an eclectic music taste in many ways, right? Yes. So tell us a bit more. What's your music influence? Because I see a lot of yacht rock there. But I know you were a fan of kind of the new metal in the 2000s. But in this album in particular, what have you been listening to before or while making it? Well, I mean, there's always a heavy diet of Milton Nessie Minto, of course. Oh, thank you. I'm Brazilian. Yeah, you know, I'm going to go straight to Brazil.

6:11Oh, thank you. Jaubasco, Timay, you know, Caetano, like all kinds of different Brazilian music. again from Tony La Horta to Pedro Martin to Hamilton de Holland. Yes. You know, his son, I've been, you know, hanging out in also just listening to them. And I don't know. It's like it's a lot. That's just one direction. But like there was one song that I couldn't get out of my mind for the life of me. It was Charlie Puth, Changes. And it's like, I don't know, from that to listening to this young, black rock artist named Farrah to Willow. Again, I'm a huge fan of Willow. So it's like at the same time, I just, who would have thought this would be the way it would translate?

7:00But I don't know. There's so many different directions. I'm always listening to video game music and it goes in many directions.

7:07Thundercat:Well, when you said Milton Asimento, you got my heart. You got my heart, Stephen. And of course, we all know that you're an obsessive fan of cartoons and kind of fantasy. I love Dragon Ball D-Rag. I mean, one of my favorite tracks from you. But there's a funny one, a funny title here. Anakin Learned His Fate. Are you also a Star Wars fan? Yeah, yeah. So what is that song about? Anakin Learned His Fate. It's such an interesting dynamic because for the essential Star Wars fan, it's kind of one of those things where you're like, the different parts of the culture have their different views of Anakin.

7:41A lot of people hate him. They're just like, oh, he's a terrible character, terrible acting. and all this. But I feel like the real Star Wars fan kind of understands that Anakin, I saw George Lucas say this in an interview recently where he was like, it wasn't Anakin's job to be amazing. It was Anakin's job to bring balance to the force. It wasn't Luke's job. It was Anakin's. And if you notice throughout his story, at the times that he was good and the things that were going on, it was like he counterbalanced what was going on in the Star universe from being a kid to a young adult to where it ultimately lands him in this one place that he still has to come back from so it was kind of like watching in a way it was just gradually watching anakin go tornado this monster that you've painted in your mind sounds amazing controlling how you feel is not

8:43Star Wars permeates my air, clearly. And I think there's a friend of mine, Big Sean, we were working on his album. And there's a song called Black Void that was created with me, him, Roger, Cheyed, and Aaron, Alan Kane. And it was one of those things where I'll never forget the creation of this song. Me, Roger, and Sean, we're watching Star Wars, the Revenge of the Sith. And this is the moment. We're not even doing it on purpose. We're watching the movie. It's in the background. And it's on repeat. And we're just going through different things and touching pieces of music and trying to create new things.

9:21And we're watching the movie on silent. And I had this epiphany about, you know, like, you know, everybody always wonders when Anakin keeled over and just, you know, I was like, oh, yeah, he was kind of like, you know, struggling, juggling. And then he just like all out just, you know, it's gone bad. The milk has gone bad. But I had this theory that the moment that you realize that Anakin had a real dilemma, it all it was like we were watching it on silent. And it was the moment that when Anakin walks back in to the council and, you know, Padme sneaks him over to the side to have a conversation with him.

9:56I couldn't unsee this after this. she goes guess what Anakin I'm pregnant and then it was this like I guarantee you go watch it again and you slow down and watch his reaction to realize and now I'm having a kid it's like alright

10:13Thundercat:love it yeah he didn't recover well man I think you should be invited to be in the next Star Wars I would hope so you've been in Star Trek there was a connection yeah exactly you should do Star Trek and Star Wars I would love to. They heard it first here on Monaco Radio. And of course, you're going live with the new album. You're playing here in London. And, you know, I know you have dates in Japan. We do have a lot of listeners in Japan. But I feel that's the country you're quite close to. I know you sang about Tokyo before in your songs. So tell us about your connection, because they love cartoons as well.

10:48Thundercat:I mean, I think that's the paradise when you go there. Yeah, it's every now and again, I get called the number one otaku, you know. I wear that badge proudly. I will always be number one otaku, real otaku. But at the same time, I think throughout my history, just growing up and fantasizing and romanticizing the different eras of Japan and thinking of the different ways it developed and how knowing a bit of its history when it comes to the wars and like the different periods of the emperors and all these different things like this and the government officials and the nobles and this. And like getting a shape of the character of said place is just kind of like it set the backdrop for me to just kind of always daydream.

11:35Again, the pop culture thing, of course, that's the first thing that hits. But historically, I think that for me, I think that it was a slow like over the years. It was like the more the realization of how much I do love the pop culture. I love the music. I love the characters that they've created. I love the stories that they've told to where it's become such a worldwide culture at this point. You know, it's like it's it's so widespread that it's crazy to like it's hard to keep up with. I was just talking to somebody about that where it's like, where do you even where do you where do you begin?

12:10I mean, there's criterion stuff, you know, there's different eras of stuff. But at the same time, I have never lost my excitement or my love and my passion for whatever is new or whatever is coming out. you know I'm always excited to see what new anime is coming or like to like I'll want to understand the story and even when it comes to genres and like you know everybody has put titles and caps on things I really love the artists and animators and storytellers that try to step away from that or try to like you know because it's like it's such a you know like even just when you hear the term like giant robo to me I kind of go you know it's like it sells it so short if you know anything about some of the, you know, giant robo stuff that they've done.

12:55But it's just one of those things where it exists now. But I will never lose my passion for those things.

13:01Thundercat:And I can totally imagine you in Japan doing like a city pop kind of music. You know, their pop music from the 80s. Yeah. I think that's very Tundercats in a way, don't you think? You know, that is not a bad idea. And finally, just sort of curiosity, I've been hearing that you've been practicing a lot of boxing as well. Is that the case? So you're literally going to become one of those kind of animes. Does that help to you as a musician as well to be on stage? With the training? Yeah. It's more so something that I think was just added to a function. It's something that I adopted later in life.

13:39I always wanted to. And at the same time that I've always wanted to, I always knew that there was always the fear of messing your hands up. But I think more than that, I enjoy the consistency of something in my life. Like it changed. It's changed my life for the most part. Absolutely. I mean, I haven't been able to get too much training in since I've been on tour, but it's one of those things where I just enjoy the work I do. And again, it's very special that specifically boxing. But I think that I've been choosing it for years, so I really enjoy it.

14:11Thundercat:It's fantastic. Listen, I love Distracted. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for coming here. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

14:48Thundercat:Thank you to Tundercat. Distracted is out now. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco, and the show was edited by Jack Dewars. Thank you for listening.