Thundercat on Creativity, Positive Mindsets & Finding His Sound

The Romesh Ranganathan Show

Ranga Bee & Platform Media

Society & Culture, Comedy

4.6 • 706 Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Can you force creativity or does it only come when it’s ready? Double Grammy Award winning artist Thundercat joins Romesh Ranganathan for a wide-ranging conversation about music, art, style and finding your own sound. From Thundercat’s journey in music, growing up around musicians, to becoming a solo artist and finding his niche, they discuss how his sound developed and how working with Flying Lotus changed everything. He also touches on creating during trauma and why he believes creativity cannot be rushed. And they discuss the potential of a new album... Plus, a question from Shanthi on confidence and dealing with bullying growing up, touring and new music, a game of Misquoted and obviously, a lot of love for the bass. A Ranga Bee Production in partnership with Platform. 00:00 Intro 03:23 Romesh gasses up Thundercat 03:57 Gift giving 06:49 Upcoming European Tour 08:15 The difference between American crowds 10:20 Was he always going to be a musician? 11:59 When art starts paying off 14:00 How did he become a solo artist? 16:30 How to define Thundercats genre 22:19 A question from Shanthi on confidence 25:28 On getting bullied 29:09 Thundercats style 35:00 New music and possible albums 38:30 On trauma effecting creativity 40:13 Misquoted 43:50 On Mac Miller 45:56 Misquoted continued 48:03 Is Thundercat a Thundercat fan? 50:56 The importance of bass 52:55 Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Are you not interested in sharks at all?
0:01.8	Because...
0:02.4	I don't think they're interested in us either.
0:03.9	No, they're not.
0:04.6	But what I mean is like...
0:05.4	You know, like...
0:07.0	I respect sharks. I'm addicted to shark films, to be honest with it. I like Shark Week. Yeah? Shark Week's good. I get... Deep Blue Sea, do you remember that? That's pretty funny. That's a good film, right? One of the greatest film deaths in all time, Samano Jackson, when it comes out the thing.
0:21.4	Yeah, you know, like you don't, try to put some by battle armor. The Meg? Did you watch that? Yeah. Did you like that? It was all so crazy. Rides the line between shit and fantastic. That's my favorite line. That's my career. Hi, I'm Thundercat, and I'm going to be on the Ramesh Ranganath in the show.
0:38.9	It's a Romance Rankine, Nathan, show. Oh, shut up, Romesh. My guest today is a double
0:53.4	Grammy winning musician from California.
0:55.0	Rolling Stone named him one of the greatest bases of all time.
0:58.0	He's worked with Kendrick Lamar, Farrell, MacMiller, and many, many more.
1:02.0	I'm going to try and play it cool as I'm genuinely a fucking huge fan of yours.
1:08.0	It's Thundercat, everybody.
1:10.0	Dude, you're one of the best man. Thank you. huge fan of yours. It's Thundercat, everybody.
1:13.3	Dude, you're one of the best, man.
1:14.1	Thank you.
1:18.7	I'm just going to get this out of the way, because I have to say it, right?
1:27.1	I think drunk was when I first, like, got into your, you know, when I sort of came across you as a solo artist,
1:30.3	I just think the, I'm going to gas you up for a bit and then we can have a proper chat, right?
1:35.8	But I think the way that you cross genres, I think the way that you blend both being so tight with feeling so loose with what you're doing.
1:48.2	I think the humor and the honesty that you, the line that you walk between those lyrics,
	...

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