Thundercat Talks New Album “Distracted” & Its Collaborators [Video]

Thundercat has always been at his most compelling when he’s balancing sincerity with that quick, sideways humor that keeps heavy feelings from turning into melodrama—and this long-form Zane Lowe conversation captures him right in that lane.

Framed around his upcoming album “Distracted,” the interview feels less like a promo stop and more like a real check-in: how he’s been living with the emotional residue of the last few years, how he keeps finding comedy inside chaos, and why collaboration is still the thing that makes his music feel alive instead of hermetically “perfect.”

The timing is the key context. Distracted is Thundercat’s first studio album in six years, set to release April 3, 2026 via Brainfeeder, and it’s built with a deliberately wide palette of voices around him. In the interview, you can hear that this isn’t “features for the sake of features”—it’s more like Thundercat curating a cast to reflect different sides of his headspace: the playful, the tender, the restless, and the parts that still feel unresolved.

A lot of that comes into focus once you look at what’s already been revealed about the album. “Distracted” includes the long-circulating “No More Lies” with Kevin Parker (Tame Impala), the newer single “I Did This To Myself” featuring Lil Yachty, and a previously unreleased collaboration with the late Mac Miller (“She Knows Too Much”)—all of which underline how personal this era is, even when it’s dressed up in bright melodies and left-field grooves. The production credits point in the same direction: Thundercat and Greg Kurstin are at the center, with additional contributions from Flying Lotus, Kenny Beats, and The Lemon Twigs, plus guest appearances that stretch from A$AP Rocky to Channel Tres and Willow.

What makes the interview worth running in full is that it puts the “collaborators” part of the title into real perspective. Thundercat talks like someone who understands that community isn’t just a rollout strategy—it’s a survival tool, a creative engine, and occasionally the only way to get a song to tell the truth you can’t quite say alone. If Distracted is an album about a mind in motion—pulled between grief, comedy, love, noise, and overload—this conversation is the clearest preview yet of why it’s going to hit: not because it’s polished, but because it’s honest about the mess.