Top 70 Thundercat Quotes

I hate studios; I’ll be honest with you. People get weird in the studio. I’ve had some great and terrible times with people. People’s personalities come out in the worst way.

I’ve always worked with other people. As a musician, it’s your role to basically share with other people.

I try and act like I’m all there. But I’m not!

I appreciate my parents for everything they instilled in me and my brothers.

Azealia Banks – love what she’s doing.

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?’

I love being involved with Brainfeeder. I would have never thought that it would have been such an intense involvement.

I’ll look at superheroes and comics and stuff and wonder, ‘Why wouldn’t you dress like that if you could?’ With fashion, I look at it as a way to express that. I don’t really pull any punches on it; otherwise, you get caught up in this nexus of dressing like everyone else.

When you put a top on something and try to bottle it, that’s when it dies.

I’m so tired of cell phones.

I don’t need to tell myself that I’m black or that I’m proud of being black. I just am, and it just doesn’t matter.

From when I was a kid, I was always very quiet within myself, I was never attention-hungry.

I personally didn’t realize people would enjoy my voice, I guess. I’m happy that they do, but I didn’t know what to expect.

Prayer is not passive. It takes a big man to pray – and to admit that he prays.

I try not to think too hard about music. I like to see where it goes. I try not to give it a direction. I figure out what it is as it’s forming. I don’t have any goal in mind other than to make the best music I can.

I’ve grown up with jazz – the Joe Hendersons, Oliver Nelsons, Miles Davis and stuff – but I was also listening to, like, Slipknot, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine. There was all of that weaved – interweaved – in there, and being from L.A., you tend to know your musical history.

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.

Why do we think the ’70s were so awesome? That ‘freeness’ of music was there.

I can fall asleep in the shower without drowning.

If you can fart in front of somebody, you know that they love you.

No other mammal is as deceitful as the human being.

I don’t think it’s corny to pray at all.

Reading and exercising are two things in life that are not necessary.

Sometimes you gotta get stupid with yourself, and you gotta enjoy your own company some time.

When I was younger, I was always a musician that could play by ear better than I could analytically.

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.

A lot of the time, people think rappers just live inside this bubble. No, the reality is there is conversation that happens. It’s not this one-dimensional thing. There’s reality that takes place.

I love Drake’s music.

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.

Yeah, I’d like to collaborate with God. Do a collaboration with God!

I love Gino Vannelli! I love every one of his albums. He’s one of my favourite songwriters – straight up.

Creatively, I’m not one to advocate people knowing every little nuance about you sometimes.

I actually went to high school with Jay Rock.

I started taking the bass more seriously when I heard Jaco Pastorius.

I feel like music itself is inspirational enough. Especially with the Internet. Not to sound like a shut-in.

It’s a privilege to always be able to create.

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.

Even if you didn’t want to have anything to do with the politics, you have to.

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.

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’m not Beyonce or Trey Songz or anything, so every now and again, I feel a little like, ‘Are they listening to me, or am I just sounding crazy singing to myself?’ I feel like that sometimes.

Songs being nine to 10 minutes long? Everyone is scared to to do it.

I went to Locke High School in Watts towards the end of the super gangbanging era.

At the start of high school, I looked like a girl… to a very major degree. I had really long hair and a really round face with no facial hair. And I went to a very rough high school.

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.

I remember swallowing my tooth up in a high chair, but I definitely don’t remember the first time I played bass.

Heartbreak is a real thing.

I grew up in Compton: 116th and Wilmington.

It was actually working with Kendrick Lamar that pushed me further into the act of songwriting, specifically.

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.

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’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.

My theory is if Tony Williams can sing, and if Kanye West can sing, so can I! So I try!

I really love my cat.

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.

Comedy is a coping mechanism, and it helps us stay alive.

Tokyo style is so specific. And I’m a very big fan of their history. It’s pretty simple. A lot of the time, people expect to see the wild style that comes out of Japan, but I think, traditionally, the style is very simple.

The world is sick.

You know what? Drake is one of my favorite artists, not just because it’s, like, the cool thing to say.

You can find humor in most things, and even terrible things.

There’s worse things in life than death.

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.

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.’

I kind of find humor in everything, even to the point where it’s awkward – like, the worst scenarios are the funniest things ever.

I listen to Kenny Loggins, like – I want to be Kenny Loggins.

‘Mortal Kombat,’ the first arcade one, that soundtrack sounds like a Chick Corea album.

Singing and playing live can be difficult. Like, in the studio, I would record either the music track first or the vocal first. I don’t necessarily do them together.

Hall & Oates is everything.

I’ve paid attention to guys growin’ up like Richard Pryor or Paul Mooney. The message that they were sending with what they did was so much bigger than them.

If somebody can make a joke about you on TV, that’s so beautiful. You’ve affected pop culture to that degree.