Collection: Thundercat

Stephen Lee Bruner grew up in a Los Angeles household built around professional musicianship: his father Ronald Bruner Sr. drummed for the Temptations, the Supremes and Gladys Knight; his mother was a flautist and percussionist; his brother Ronald Bruner Jr. became a drummer; his younger brother Jameel is a keyboardist. He started bass at four, joined crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies at sixteen, and returned to his musical roots after leaving the band to reconnect with childhood friend Kamasi Washington and the loose Los Angeles collective that would eventually be named the West Coast Get Down. His introduction to Flying Lotus and the Brainfeeder label produced a debut album, "The Golden Age of Apocalypse" (Brainfeeder, 2011), co-produced by Flying Lotus, that placed a six-string fretless bass at the centre of music that moved between jazz harmony, funk, soul, psychedelia and anime-influenced emotional directness in a way that had no direct precedent. He appeared throughout Kamasi Washington's "The Epic" (Brainfeeder, 2015) and Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly" (Top Dawg, 2015). "Drunk" (Brainfeeder, 2017) brought Herbie Hancock, Pharrell Williams, Wiz Khalifa, Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald together in a record that operated as both technical showcase and emotional autobiography. "It Is What It Is" (Brainfeeder, 2020), was written partly in the aftermath of Mac Miller's death. Rolling Stone has placed him among the greatest bass players of all time. He remains active and Los Angeles-based.