Flying Lotus

The Los Angeles beat went cosmic

In a Los Angeles where hip hop, jazz, and electronic music coincided on the same night, Flying Lotus became the nexus of that scene. His pulse—indebted to J Dilla, Madlib, and 90s West Coast rap, yet now unrecognizable—caught everyone's attention when Cartoon Network chose his tracks for Adult Swim bumpers. The album 1983, released in 2006 by Plug Research, was born in the intimacy of his family home and launched a career that Warp Records accelerated the following year with the Reset EP. Los Angeles (2008) portrayed the city as an electric organism: seventeen wonky cuts, fragmented hip hop, and IDM that placed the producer at the center of the beat scene, from Low End Theory to the Warp dancefloors.

Brainfeeder, Cosmogramma, and the Coltrane bloodline

In 2008, he founded Brainfeeder, a label that has sheltered Thundercat, The Gaslamp Killer, Samiyam, and Kamasi Washington. Cosmogramma (2010) was the leap: orchestral afrofuturism with harp, strings by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, the bass of Thundercat, and the voice of Thom Yorke, imbued with the mourning for his mother and the spiritual trail of his great-aunt Alice Coltrane. The album won at the Independent Music Awards. Until the Quiet Comes (2012) delved into the dreamlike; the same year, he revealed his rapper alias Captain Murphy with Duality. In 2013, he curated the FlyLo FM station within Grand Theft Auto V. You're Dead! (2014), featuring Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, and Herbie Hancock, entered the Billboard Top 20 and saw Never Catch Me nominated for a Grammy for Best Dance Recording; as a producer for To Pimp a Butterfly, he returned to the nominations.

3D glasses, horror cinema, and science fiction

Live, he abandoned the myth of the motionless producer: 3D tours with Strangeloop and Timeboy, the Hypercube, and appearances at Coachella, Glastonbury, Bonnaroo, or the ACL Music Festival. In 2008, his Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1 was chosen as mix of the year. As a filmmaker, he premiered the feature film Kuso at Sundance (2017), signed a segment of V/H/S/99, and in 2025, directed and scored the science fiction film Ash. In 2021, he composed the soundtrack for the Netflix series Yasuke, extending a relationship with animation that dates back to Adult Swim.

Flamagra, Spirit Box, and the return to 1983

Flamagra (2019) topped the Billboard Dance/Electronic chart with David Lynch, Anderson .Paak, George Clinton, Solange, and Tierra Whack. A Grammy arrived as producer of It Is What It Is by Thundercat, and another nomination as producer of the year. After a more cinematic cycle, he returned to the short format with the EP Spirit Box (2024) and Big Mama (2026), now on Brainfeeder, and reissued 1983 in 2026. He remains the bridge between the Los Angeles underground beat scene and concert, film, and video game electronics, with recent dates at the Blue Note and Knockdown Center.