Six years to the date of his last LP, Thundercat will release his fifth studio album, Distracted, coming out April 3rd via Brainfeeder. The new album features contributions from A$AP Rocky, WILLOW, Tame Impala, Channel Tres, Lil Yachty and a previously unreleased collaboration with the dearly departed Mac Miller.
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.