The sky let itself loose as I walked towards my car for the show. The wind picked up and the trees shook violently, pelting my windshield with sticks and leaves. That kind of weather breeds strangities in humans, similar to how a dog might tuck its tail and whimper or a cat might start meowing at nothing. Weather makes for craziness. As I drove, half-expecting the sky to come down on me, the strangeness became manifest.

A man crossed the street while cars zipped past him at full speed; drivers braked at green lights and drove away on red, but every light felt yellow to me. I cannot say that I was somehow immune to the weather. I committed at least a dozen traffic violations en-route to watch Thundercat play on a humid June evening at Emo’s.

I came early to observe the crowd as they waited for the doors to open, but as soon as I was parked, the sheets of rain started falling sloppingly against my car, locking me in place and obscuring any view of concert-goers, or so I thought.

With no aux cable, soft spanish ballads from 98.9 FM accompanied the raindrops while I read and cars pulled up next to me. The air thickened. Drivers, like me, chose for the most part to stay in their cars. I saw through the sheets of rain a man in a blue sedan calmly puff a pipe. Likewise, I could see in my rearview mirror scores of people run with gleeful abandon toward the entrance, caring not for the rain, thinking they’d at least be alone at the doors, which this reporter cannot comment on.

When the storm passed, the spell lifted.The strangeness that the weather bred gave way to a search for feelings once again, which, when one looked for them, seemed to be that of comfort, escape, and camaraderie. The line outside the doors was quiet then, many of us seeming to take a moment to note our appreciation of life, good and bad, and the beauty of nature-- a fitting prelude for the show to come. Enter Thundercat.

Thundercat in sync with the fleet-fingered Dennis Hamm.

Thundercat aka Steven Bruner is a preeminent musician. He was 16 years old when he completed his first tour as a bassist with rock group Suicidal Tendencies. He won a Grammy in 2016 for his collaboration with Kendrick Lamar on the song These Walls, so of course I came into the show expecting nothing less than his accolades demanded. I wasn’t disappointed.

Bruner was immaculate. High-energy was the name of the game. Each song was performed with the funk-jazz fusion associated with Bruner’s Brainfeeder label; From A Fan’s Mail to Tron Song, one second transcended the next. It felt like the solos would suck the air from the building with their jazzy improvisations, funky freedom and tight assistance. It’s a consequence of the type of music that Thundercat creates: a passionate, thoughtful, and unerringly human amalgamation of weird and wonderful that can’t help but be felt on a level beyond music.

The concert was intimate. Every time a stranger stepped on my foot, the culprit would turn to say they were sorry. Bruner wore a toothy smile as he jammed away breath-taking tunes like Jethro and Drink Dat, pausing occasionally to appreciate his keyboardist, Dennis Ham, and drummer, Justin Brown, whenever they got lost in the funk sauce. But what the show brought in musicianship it also delivered in compassion. Bruner used the short breaks between songs to talk earnestly with his crowd.

A young Thundercat center stage with Suicidal Tendencies.

“I’ve been feeling very depressed lately,” he told us. “There’s not much that I can do about it. But I have changed. I stopped drinking.”

The crowd erupted in cheers of approval, swelling itself into a roar of appreciation for the man who’d given them so much tonight. The claps fluttered as Bruner spoke again.

“Something had to change. So this one goes out to Mac.”

Mac Miller died of an overdose in September 2018. Bruner and Miller had been companions; brothers in arms. “That was one of my closest friends,” he said. We offered ourselves in the only way we could. Everyone amassed their hands and clapped for a friend who’d lost a friend. There are no words to offer on the subject except those from Bruner himself: “Wherever you are, Mac, you’re always in my heart. I love you, man.”

Thundercat and the late, great Mac Miller play NPR’s Tiny Desk.

Thundercat fostered the relationship with his crowd all night long. Every break between songs was filled with personality.

Before launching into the song Heartbreaks and Setbacks off of his 2013 album Apocalypse, Bruner took the time to tell the crowd about his love life.

“I recently went through maybe the worst break-up I’ve ever had in my entire life...heartbreak is real,” and after the song ended, screamed “Fuck all that shit!” and launched into a song about the recuperation that video games offer with Friend Zone, sung with a pointed passion along with his sympathetic crowd. Once the song ended, Bruner offered his approval (“That actually felt good!”) and a hot take: “I still think that the new Mortal Kombat kind of sucks though.”

The night was funny, too. Bruner’s friend and Twitter partner-in-crime Zach Fox performed a stand-up set before the show started. He made jokes about everything from masturbating in a hotel room (“The first thing I do when I get to the hotel is jack off,”) to the relationships between white and black friends (“Your black friends think about enslaving you all the time,” he joked). Fox invited a cheerful Q&A section, claiming his favorite jazz artist is Adele. Bruner told the story of his first time in Japan with Leon Ware (“Y’all definitely don’t know who that is,”) his relationship with Erykah Badu, (“I’ll save that for my book titled ‘Kill Me Now’”) and asked whether the audience had defecated blood.

The time I spent with Thundercat felt less like a stop at a major venue during a nationwide tour and more like a backyard jam session. When it was all over, the second trance of the day ended and the buzz of his charismatic performance slowly wore off. I forgot that my Converse were still wet, that my backpack had been confiscated, that I had a life outside of watching Bruner’s deft hands navigate his custom bass guitar and appreciating the craftsmanship and love of one of this century’s best talents. Bruner bowed, and the crowd cheered one last time for a friend.

The sky was dark when the show let out. Storm clouds brewed in the distance. People huddled in circles around the glow of cigarettes, hugging and laughing and exhaling. I walked to my car with a friend, talking possibilities, expectations met and exceeded, and for it all, feeling more human than before.

The Thundercat Experience

CULTURE CAPITAL