Mac Miller is on Thundercat’s new album

Exactly six years after his last LP, Thundercat will release his fifth studio album, “Distracted,” out April 3 via Brainfeeder. Produced by Greg Kurstin together with Flying Lotus, Kenny Beats and The Lemon Twigs, the album includes collaborations with A$AP Rocky, Tame Impala, Lil Yachty, Channel Tres, WILLOW and Mac Miller. The album was preceded by the single “Did This To Myself” feat. Lil Yachty, already available on platforms. With “Distracted”, Thundercat moves ideally between the frenzy of “Drunk” and the more composed melancholy of “It Is What It Is”seeking a space of balance for one’s conscience. The album does not condemn the present, but crosses and analyzes it, focusing on how distraction can be both a limit and a possible form of defense at the same time.

Thundercat’s skepticism towards technological “progress” emerges explicitly. The science fiction imagery gives way to an anti-climax of drones without lasers, smartphones that only improve cameras, innovation reduced to surveillance and access. The disappointment isn’t just the technology itself, but the gap between what was promised and what was actually delivered. If the limits of distraction are evident in the contemporary attention economy, Thundercat also identifies how it can transform itself into an ambiguous but useful tool. As he himself stated: “Sometimes you need to distract yourself to focus in a different way.” It is no coincidence that inside the word “daydreams” there is “dreams”. “Distracted” is also a deeply collaborative record. WILLOW joins Thundercat on “ThunderWave,” Channel Tres keeps the beat on “This Thing We Call Love,” while A$AP Rocky appears on “Funny Friends.” The album artwork is signed by Neil Krug.

The message that Thundercat would like to leave after listening is simple: “Enjoy it and have fun, and know that the struggle is real and it changes shape, but you have to keep moving forward.” In an era that requires constant stances, “Distracted” chooses a quieter trajectory: accept the confusion, the tiredness, the distraction, and still try to make something meaningful out of it. In the years following “It Is What It Is”, which in spite of itself became a symbolic title of 2020 and was awarded at the Grammys as Best Progressive R&B Album, Thundercat’s figure continued to expand. Collaborations with A$AP Rocky, Tame Impala, Gorillaz, Silk Sonic, Kaytranada and Justice have consolidated its centralitywhile his extra-musical activity also led him to acting, with a participation in “Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett”, and to several television appearances, including Tiny Desk with Yo Gabba Gabba.

Born in Los Angeles, Stephen Bruner grew up in an environment where technique and discipline were fundamental. Son of a drummer and brother of Ronald Bruner Jr., he developed a rigorous relationship with rhythm and sound space very early. Before his solo career he played in Suicidal Tendencies, an experience that broadened his musical vocabulary. When he emerged as an artist in the early 1910s, his music brought with it jazz fusion, funk, hip hop and a humor deeply linked to internet culture. Albums like “The Golden Age of Apocalypse” and “Apocalypse” immediately showed vulnerable writing, but it was “Drunk” that definitively established his identity: fragmented, emotionally unstable, crossed by irony and melancholy. “It Is What It Is” slowed that flow, leaving room for mourning. “Distracted” falls exactly between these two extremes. On March 5th Thundercat will inaugurate the European tour of “Distracted” at Alcatraz in Milan.