Thundercat - It Is What It Is (LP) 2022 (Mint (M))

It Is What It Is, released April 2020 on Brainfeeder, is Thundercat's fourth album and his loosest, built more around improvisation and raw feeling than the tighter songwriting of his earlier records. Jazz fusion, P-Funk, R&B and L.A. electronic influences move through tracks that read like diary entries on connection, loss and heartbreak, including "Fair Chance," a tribute to his late collaborator Mac Miller, who died shortly before the album was finished. "I Love Louis Cole" pairs jazz-funk with punk-inflected percussion, while "Dragonball Durag" mixes humor with genuine vulnerability over a slow, funky groove, the whole record feeling looser and more emotionally exposed than anything he'd released before it.