You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
There's this moment where you realize, you know, I'm making a funk song.
You know, like, yeah, you are.
It's like, oh, really?
You just go like 100% into that.
Thundercat is the alter ego of bassist and singer-songwriter Stephen Bruner.
He's played bass for both Suicidal Tendencies and Erykah Badu and helped shaped Kendrick Lamar's chart-topping,
critically acclaimed album To Pimp a Butterfly.
In this episode, Thundercat breaks down his song Them Changes.
He co-produced it with longtime collaborator Flying Lotus with Kamasi Washington on saxophone.
I am Stephen Thundercat Bruner.
I started playing bass around the age of four or five or so.
You know, every time I go back and look at different pictures and stuff like that,
I always had a guitar-like toy when I couldn't talk.
I actually started writing in my early teens.
A lot of the time, music starts with the drums for me.
This song, I remember it started with a drum sample from the Isley Brothers,
you know, Footsteps in the Dark.