If you can fart in front of somebody, you know that they love you.
Thundercat
I'm a guy where my perfect pitch has been altered by the fact that I usually tune up to what's going on. When I was a kid, it was horrible! If two notes were playing right next to each other, and they were dissonant, it would drive me nuts. If it was something that sounded like it was in between notes, it'd make me cringe.
My family is all musicians - my dad plays drums, my mom plays flute, my older brother plays drums, my little brother plays drums and piano. For some reason, I didn't get the memo, so I just play bass.
The truth is hip hop has always complemented jazz and vice versa, but there's always been this communication barrier that exists based on music to lyrics.
Sometimes I practice to Allan Holdsworth or John McLaughlin, but I don't just practice to jazz and jazz-fusion albums. I'll practice to TV theme music - one of my favorites is 'M*A*S*H.' I'll just play along with anything on the TV.
A lot of joking stems from a very dark place a bit.
You love 'Dragon Ball Z' for what it is, but when you really start to look at it, you're like, 'What the hell am I watching?' sometimes.
I love being involved with Brainfeeder. I would have never thought that it would have been such an intense involvement.
I can tell when one of my songs is played on the radio because everybody just starts calling and texting me. It gets overwhelming because if you don't answer the right ones, they think you hate them, or you're ignoring them and are not friends anymore. It's all kind of crazy.
My theory is if Tony Williams can sing, and if Kanye West can sing, so can I! So I try!
Creatively, I'm not one to advocate people knowing every little nuance about you sometimes.
I feel like music itself is inspirational enough. Especially with the Internet. Not to sound like a shut-in.
I really love my cat.
You can find humor in most things, and even terrible things.
Sometimes you gotta get stupid with yourself, and you gotta enjoy your own company some time.
I love Gino Vannelli! I love every one of his albums. He's one of my favourite songwriters - straight up.
I do enjoy a bit of the fantasy world that anime provides, but at the same time, I need the reality in it. I'm very much a stickler about the actual animation. I'm not into the cutesy, stereotypical animation with big eyes and a small chin. That annoys the hell out of me.
My high school teacher, Reggie Andrews, was a huge factor in my learning my instrument. He didn't play bass, but it was the part where he gave me a knowledgeable perspective of what it was that I was doing.
When you put a top on something and try to bottle it, that's when it dies.
I'm kind of a simple guy. The best way you can describe it is, I'm the same person I was when I was a kid. Everyone's like, 'Of course you are,' but I'm like, 'No, seriously.' I liked 'ThunderCats' when I was a kid; I call myself Thundercat now.
I treat my cat like she's my therapist or something, because I talk to her all the time, and as she's gotten older, she talks back. It's pretty funny.
I was playing bass when I was a kid; I play bass now. I used to draw pictures when I was a kid, and I draw pictures now. I talked backwards and weird when I was a kid, and I talk backwards now.
Growing up, I always loved working with people. I love playing with people and having that moment of discovering something different. I believe in the magic of what music is.
I remember swallowing my tooth up in a high chair, but I definitely don't remember the first time I played bass.
I remember playing Billy Cobham's 'Total Eclipse' for Snoop Dogg. I also played him Frank Zappa, 'Apostrophe.' And I played him 'Saint Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast.'
I remember, with Kendrick on 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' I was in tears. I literally was because it had pulled me and pushed me and stretched me and crushed me and expanded me. It was like I didn't know which way was up. By the end of it, I felt like I was floating in the ocean like a carcass.
I actually went to high school with Jay Rock.
Money comes and goes. But when you look back on your career, you have be able to answer to yourself, 'Did I make the most of my time on earth?'
Brainfeeder makes me want to keep generating better music.
Driving around with my dad, growing up, he would play everything: Philip Bailey, Manhattan Transfer, Frank Zappa, Cream. I'd be like, 'Dad, cut this stuff off!' And he'd say, 'No, you're gonna listen to it.' I didn't understand why he liked it so much. In my mind, I would be thinking about the theme song to 'Sonic the Hedgehog.'
I'm left-handed.
That will be on my tombstone: He lived five minutes away from Flying Lotus.
Comedy is a coping mechanism, and it helps us stay alive.
Hall & Oates is everything.
It's a blessing and a curse at the same time, the idea of genre.
'Mortal Kombat,' the first arcade one, that soundtrack sounds like a Chick Corea album.
I feel like there are things that inspire the music, and then there's the music itself. I don't feel like I always need to force them together.
I can fall asleep in the shower without drowning.
It feels nice to be able to call Brainfeeder my home. It's giving art the platform. That's what Brainfeeder has always been for me: hope for art.
I don't play with toys anymore. I mean, I do play with toys, but not like when I was a kid. I don't crash cars into each other, but now I collect certain toys.
I love Drake's music.
My first reaction to playing at Coachella was like a kid who has no idea of the rules. I just wanted to go have a jam session with my friends. I didn't get that we couldn't just jump on one another's stages while they were performing!
I don't look at my instrument as having one specific role; I was raised to go as far as you can. But Raphael Saadiq hated my bass. He told me to throw it away. And playing in Snoop's band, there was a time when my bass was more annoying to everyone than helpful. They would get on my case: 'Can you make your bass sound like more of a bass?'
'Looney Tunes' was not a children's cartoon. I don't care what anybody says. It was very politically charged, very racial. And then they tried to soften it up for kids later. But it was for the adults.
Kenny Loggins pours his heart and soul into the music he makes. He'll take you with him through everything he's going through, which is not easy.
You can do all kinds of things with your instrument outside of its surface purpose. My bass is my crutch, but the best crutch I could have.
I went to Locke High School in Watts towards the end of the super gangbanging era.
When I invite people over to my apartment, they usually don't like it because the music I play confuses the crap out of them - I'm making people listen to the 'Final Fantasy' soundtrack, and they're like, 'Why is this happening? Let's just leave and find somebody who wants us to have fun and not teach us about something.'
When I was younger, I was always a musician that could play by ear better than I could analytically.
I actually went to an arts middle school with Shia LaBeouf, but even there, I was one of the weirder kids.
