Thundercat, Channel Tres

by Marcus J. Moore We live in a time when our thumbs know more than our minds. We scroll past each other’s joy and grief before breakfast, absorb a day’s worth of tragedy by lunch, and still convince ourselves that the next notification might be the dopamine hit that’ll make us feel better. As much as some of us complain about smartphones — or, more specifically, what’s on said smartphones — distraction is the air we breathe. Social media, surveillance, endless updates and countless opinions, it all piles up until focus feels like a luxury item. For Thundercat, the clutter isn’t abstract. And on Distracted, his long-awaited fifth studio album, it’s the central theme of his life and art right now. “If you got an Instagram, you know exactly what I’m talking about,” he says matter-of-factly, half joking, half exhausted, when asked the impetus of the album’s title. Thundercat doesn’t frame distraction as a buzzword or a diagnosis; instead, he treats it like something omnipresent, something you deal with whether you like it or not. Distracted arrives six years after 2020’s It Is What It Is, an album shaped by grief, romantic heartbreak, and the sudden loss of his friend and collaborator Mac Miller. If that record felt like a long exhale after trauma, Distracted feels like the restless pacing that follows: the period when life keeps happening whether you’re ready or not. It’s laughing through the pain, using humor as an aid to deal with the BS. Rather than positioning Distracted as a sharp left turn from It Is What It Is, Thundercat understands it as continuation. “I don’t think the heartbreak ever stopped,” he says, then immediately undercuts the heaviness with humor: “If it ain’t a girl, it’s taxes. If it ain’t taxes, it’s World War III. If it ain’t World War III, it’s a new update to the phone.” That cadence — bleak, funny, painfully accurate — has always been his sweet spot. What’s changed is the scale of what he’s responding to. The heartbreak is no longer just romantic; it’s existential. Born Stephen Bruner in Los Angeles, Thundercat came up in a lineage that prized musicianship and discipline. His father was a drummer; his brother, Ronald Bruner Jr., has gone on to play with everyone from Kamasi Washington to Snoop Dogg. Before Thundercat ever sang about love, lust or loneliness, he learned how to listen, how to sit inside rhythm, how to respect silence, and how to play with intention. His early years included a stint with the metal band Suicidal Tendencies, an experience that sharpened his sense of structure even as it widened his sonic palette. When he eventually emerged as a solo artist in the early 2010s, his music carried all of that history: jazz fusion’s complexity, funk’s elasticity, hip-hop’s intimacy, and a distinctly internet-era sense of humor. Albums like The Golden Age of Apocalypse (2011) and Apocalypse (2013) introduced a musician not afraid to be vulnerable, but it was 2017’s Drunk that crystallized Thundercat as a singular voice. Fresh off a star turn as a major presence on Kendrick Lamar’s landmark album To Pimp a Butterfly, Drunk’s emotional whiplash mirrored the fragmented way people consume music and life in the digital age. Songs blurred together, punchlines landed like confessions, and sadness hid behind comedic veils. It Is What It Is slowed that pace down: It sat with grief and allowed space to feel. Distracted lives somewhere between those poles. Importantly, Thundercat insists the album wasn’t about chasing a specific sound. “I don’t know if I was going for sound as compared to just enjoying the process,” he explains. That mindset represents a quiet but significant evolution, one that shines abundantly here. “What Is Left To Say” resembles a 1960s Brit-pop song, down to the layered “Wall of Sound” production technique pioneered 60 years ago. “This Thing We Call Love” is a late-night dance tune informed by sweaty dancehalls in some faraway exotica. On Distracted, he leans into the beyond, working extensively with producer Greg Kurstin and embracing change rather than resisting it. “It was not being afraid of the unknown for me,” he says of the album’s creative process. “Something new and something different.” That openness extends to the album’s collaborators. Features from Willow, A$AP Rocky, Lil Yachty and the late Mac Miller feel like conversations already in progress. On “ThunderWave,” Willow’s presence is tender and intuitive, a natural extension of Thundercat’s melodic sensibility. “That song felt very right between us,” he says simply. On “Funny Friends,” A$AP Rocky slides into Thundercat’s world without disrupting its emotional gravity, adding texture to its outsized yacht-rock essence. Even the Lil Yachty-assisted “I Did This to Myself” reads less like a crossover play and more like two artists acknowledging the messiness of accountability. The song titles themselves tell a story. “I Wish I Didn’t Waste Your Time.” “You Left Without Saying Goodbye.” “She Knows Too Much.” They read like internal monologues you don’t mean to say out loud — the kind that surface at 3 a.m. when the phone is finally face down. Thundercat resists over-explaining them. “Human sentiments,” he shrugs. That restraint is part of the album’s strength. They’re lived moments, snapshots of feelings that don’t resolve neatly. Distracted vividly captures the tension between overstimulation and introspection. Thundercat is deeply skeptical of technological “progress,” especially the way it’s narrowed our collective imagination instead of expanding it. He jokes about Star Trek and childhood dreams of space travel, then pivots to the anticlimax of reality: drones without lasers, phones that only upgrade cameras, innovation reduced to spying and access. The disappointment isn’t just about gadgets; it’s about what we were promised versus what we got. Yet here’s the kicker: sometimes distraction isn’t bad. Thundercat likens it to a doctor waving a toy in front of a child to soften the pain of a needle — a metaphor that reframes the entire album. Distracted isn’t about condemning modern life; it’s about surviving it and finding joy where you can. Laughing when the alternative is despair. Letting yourself drift so you can return with clearer eyes. “Sometimes you need to be distracted to focus in a different way,” he declares. That philosophy shows up in how Thundercat performs the music, too. At live shows, including a recent Montreal Jazz Festival appearance, he emphasized playfulness — pulling a young fan onstage to dance along with the band, stretching songs, breaking the fourth wall. “Try to make it fun,” he says with a laugh. Fun, in this context, is resistance and a reminder that presence still matters, even in fragments. If It Is What It Is was about sitting with loss, Distracted is about learning how to move again without pretending the loss didn’t happen. But if you think this is Thundercat on some new year, new me kinda vibe, think again. “Ain’t shit changed,” he jokes, but his relationship to uncertainty has matured. He’s just as comfortable with flux, still letting songs change shape over time, trusting that meaning will reveal itself after the fact. What he ultimately wants listeners to take from Distracted is disarmingly simple: “Just enjoy it and have fun and just know that the struggle is real and changes shape, but just to keep pushing forward.” In an era that demands constant commentary, Thundercat offers something quieter and, in its own way, more radical. He gives permission to be confused. To be tired. To be, well, distracted — and still make something beautiful out of the noise.