We live in a time when our thumbs know more than our minds. We scroll past each other’s joy and grief before breakfast, absorb a day’s worth of tragedy by lunch, and still convince ourselves that the next notification might be the dopamine hit that’ll make us feel better. As much as some of us complain about smartphones — or, more specifically, what’s on said smartphones — distraction is the air we breathe. Social media, surveillance, endless updates and countless opinions, it all piles up until focus feels like a luxury item. For Thundercat, the clutter isn’t abstract. And on Distracted, his long-awaited fifth studio album, it’s the central theme of his life and art right now.

Rather than positioning Distracted as a sharp left turn from It Is What It Is, Thundercat understands it as continuation. “I don’t think the heartbreak ever stopped,” he says, then immediately undercuts the heaviness with humor: “If it ain’t a girl, it’s taxes. If it ain’t taxes, it’s World War III. If it ain’t World War III, it’s a new update to the phone.” That cadence — bleak, funny, painfully accurate — has always been his sweet spot. What’s changed is the scale of what he’s responding to. The heartbreak is no longer just romantic; it’s existential. Born Stephen Bruner in Los Angeles, Thundercat came up in a lineage that prized musicianship and discipline. His father was a drummer; his brother, Ronald Bruner Jr., has gone on to play with everyone from Kamasi Washington to Snoop Dogg. Before Thundercat ever sang about love, lust or loneliness, he learned how to listen, how to sit inside rhythm, how to respect silence, and how to play with intention. His early years included a stint with the metal band Suicidal Tendencies, an experience that sharpened his sense of structure even as it widened his sonic palette. When he eventually emerged as a solo artist in the early 2010s, his music carried all of that history: jazz fusion’s complexity, funk’s elasticity, hip-hop’s intimacy, and a distinctly internet-era sense of humor.