He may have hundreds of millions of streams, two Grammys and collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Haim and Gorillaz, but the bassist-singer Thundercat still worries aloud about being attacked on stage. “I feel like if I keep talking somebody’s going to hit me with a beer bottle,” he told his audience at Koko in north London this year. Was he being serious? “I have been hit with a beer bottle,” Thundercat (real name Stephen Lee Bruner) replies, deadpan but with the hint of a playful smile behind his huge shades.
Sometimes, the 39-year-old Californian explains, his audience just wants him to “get to the point”. Because when he performs, Bruner is fond of a good noodle — an impressive, intricate and occasionally very long solo. Most of us fans enjoy the session vibe.
But, he tells me when we meet in a central London hotel, “there is [always] that one guy yelling, ‘Do Dragonball Durag’” — the psychedelic track from his 2020 Grammy-winning album It Is What It Is. Another favourite is Them Changes, from his 2017 BBC Radio 6 album of the year Drunk, which combines the funkiest bass with his beautiful, often falsetto, singing voice. When he speaks, however, it is in a cool baritone.
Bruner’s penchant for noodling has got him in trouble with Snoop Dogg, the veteran Californian rapper whose band he toured with early in his career. Snoop let Bruner (or “Baby Bass”, as Snoop called him at the time) take a solo before interrupting him. “He was like, ‘Stop, stop, stop — it’s too many notes!’”
Improv can veer into self-indulgence, but in the age of AI and mass streaming it is moments like these that make live performances unique. Besides, Bruner caters to his crowd in other ways, often playing his biggest song, the irresistible, synthy dance bop Funny Thing twice. And he’s a maestro with his instrument — Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea calls him “the best bass player on the planet”. Listen out for Bruner’s nifty contribution to Bruno Mars’s sexy After Last Night.
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“I don’t remember a moment in life that I was not playing bass,” Bruner says. He comes from a musical family: Pam, his mother, is a flautist and his drummer father, Ronald Sr, played with Diana Ross, Gladys Knight and the Temptations. But rather than name-dropping anecdotes, his father would give life lessons. “He would tell me, ‘Stephen, as a musician, you’re going to want to party. There’s going to be drugs all around you. But you don’t have to do them.’”
Bruner, who loves anime, almost dedicated his life to visual art instead. “I wanted to go to school for illustration, I wanted to be an artist. I still draw. That’s one reason why I love animation so much.”
Then his father told him to take music seriously if that was his chosen path. Also, Bruner didn’t want to be one of those former jammers who say: “I used to play bass. I used to be in a group.” His brother, Ronald Jr, is also a drummer, and another Grammy winner. He and Bruner started out in a metal band together as teens and have played on each other’s albums since. But he doesn’t want you to get sentimental about it. “No, we’re not the Osmonds, we’re not the Jacksons,” Bruner says. “My father raised us to be very individual.”
He talks about this musical family dynamic with Este, one of the three sisters who make up Haim: “We’re always picking each other’s brains.” Bruner features on Haim’s song 3am and the trio cameoed in his Dragonball Durag video.
He is also in regular contact with Willow, the actor Will Smith’s successful indie pop singer-guitarist-bassist daughter — a nepo baby, yes, but one who is talented in her own right. “She’s a creative powerhouse,” Bruner says. “We send each other ideas.”
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He also mentions the young Indian bassist Mohini Dey too: “She’s a monster on the instrument.” What about people who post videos of themselves playing bass on TikTok — does he watch them? “I don’t give a f*** about TikTok.” Righto.
Bruner made his acting debut in the Star Wars spin-off The Book of Boba Fett in 2022 and would love to do more. But right now he is working on new music. It Is What It Is came out four years ago, and covered a period of heartbreak and grief after the loss of his close friend the rapper Mac Miller, to whom he dedicated the album.
I ask Bruner how he is coping. “I’m grateful for the pain because it reminds me of where I came from. I just let it in and take the moment to be what it is. And I thank God that I met him. I find my peace with it and I move about.”
After Miller’s death from an accidental overdose in 2018, Bruner stopped drinking. His father helped him, a subject that makes him emotional. “He didn’t judge me. He didn’t express that he was disappointed,” Bruner says, his voice cracking. “The only thing my dad said to me is, ‘You ever think about giving it up for a year?’
“And I just hugged him because it was my dad. It meant the world that he said that to me and it kept me going straight.” He is still sober. “When stuff gets hard to process I always have that moment where I go, ‘I can see why I drank.’ Addiction is real and not so easily removed.”
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Miller had been engaged to Ariana Grande; they separated shortly before his death. During the Covid winter of 2020 Bruner and Grande recorded a live version of Them Changes together (she has described it as one of her favourite songs).
“Ariana and I are for ever connected through Mac. And this is part of the healing process,” Bruner said at the time. “It was a very special moment and I’m happy that she was happy doing it too,” he tells me. “There were all kinds of mixed reactions … why would you? This and that. It didn’t matter to me. It mattered that we got to share a moment that connected us.”
Grande has publicly backed Kamala Harris in the forthcoming presidential election. Does Bruner think it is important for artists to state their political alignments and encourage fans to vote? “Oh God,” Bruner says. I try again. People are saying Taylor Swift should come out as a Democrat: what does he think? He waits a moment and then offers a wonderful non-answer: “I’m just trying to stop eating so much sugar.” The deadpan and the smile are back. Time for some more noodling.
Thundercat is playing at All Points East Festival in London on August 16, theamazingthundercat.com
All about that bass: five all-time greats
by Will Hodgkinson
Bootsy Collins
Surviving both James Brown and George Clinton’s bands takes some doing. The Cincinnati legend with the star guitar did it by being both disciplined and funky. Now he even has his own Funk University.
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Paul McCartney
Let’s not forget that alongside being one of Britain’s greatest songwriters, not to mention a Beatle, Macca brought fun and imagination to the most workmanlike instrument of any popular beat combo. Think of the bubbling bass on Paperback Writer or the evocative runs on A Day in the Life.
Carol Kaye
Many of the great records made in Sixties LA featured session team the Wrecking Crew and among their number was this supremo. If you have ever wondered where the cool low notes to Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman or the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations came from, wonder no more.
John Entwistle
The quiet man of the Who, alongside coming up with the classic Boris the Spider held it together while Keith Moon and Pete Townshend created chaos around him. His ultra-fast mini-solo on My Generation inspired generations of would-be bass heroes alone.
Charles Mingus
Talking of greats, the “Angry Man of Jazz’’ was an upright bass master and hugely important in the improvisational development of bebop; a radical, uncompromising figure and a giant of jazz’s late Fifties golden age.
