Thundercat

From Suicidal Tendencies to Brainfeeder

Stephen Lee Bruner was born on October 19, 1984 in Los Angeles and raised in Compton and other parts of the city; his stage name comes from the 1985 cartoon ThunderCats. At fifteen he had a minor hit in Germany with the boy band No Curfew, and about a year later joined the crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies. At Locke High School his teacher Reggie Andrews introduced him to Kamasi Washington, and in 2004 they formed the Young Jazz Giants with Cameron Graves and his brother Ronald Bruner Jr., which grew into the West Coast Get Down collective with Terrace Martin and others. He cites Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller as influences.

His session work includes electric bass on Erykah Badu's New Amerykah (2008), Flying Lotus's Cosmogramma (2010), Until the Quiet Comes (2012) and You're Dead! (2014), and Kamasi Washington's Live at 5th Street Dick's and The Proclamation. Badu is credited with helping him find his stage identity, and Flying Lotus pushed him to start singing. His debut The Golden Age of Apocalypse arrived in 2011, followed by Apocalypse (2013) on Brainfeeder. He played bass and sang on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), including "These Walls", which won the Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Performance in 2016.

The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam (June 22, 2015) and Drunk (February 24, 2017, 23 tracks, number 50 on the Billboard 200) established the solo sound, and It Is What It Is (April 3, 2020) won Best Progressive R&B Album at the 63rd Grammys. Later work includes Gorillaz's "Cracker Island" (2022), "No More Lies" with Tame Impala (2023), "The End" with Justice, used in the Paris 2024 Olympics closing ceremony, and Distracted (April 3, 2026, Brainfeeder), mostly produced by Greg Kurstin.

He plays a six-string Ibanez Custom Shop bass tuned BEADGC, with a hollowed maple body, EMG pickups and piezo saddles, and Ibanez produced a signature model, the TCB1006. Rolling Stone ranks him among the great bass players, and Steve Lacy called him the coolest bass player that ever walked the Earth. Setlist.fm counts 630 setlists, with 2017 his busiest year.