Distracted

Distracted is the fifth studio album by Los Angeles-based bassist and producer Thundercat (Stephen Lee Bruner), released on April 3, 2026 via Brainfeeder, exactly six years to the day after his Grammy-winning predecessor It Is What It Is.

The album was executive produced by Thundercat alongside Greg Kurstin, the pop maximalist known for his work with Adele, with additional contributions from Flying Lotus, Kenny Beats, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, and The Lemon Twigs. Its fifteen tracks feature an uncommonly diverse cast of collaborators: Tame Impala, A$AP Rocky, WILLOW, Lil Yachty, Channel Tres, Remi Wolf, and the late Mac Miller, whose posthumous appearance on She Knows Too Much represents one of his final recorded collaborations.

Thematically, the album explores the paradoxes of modern distraction: the way digital overstimulation, social media anxiety, and AI intrusion erode genuine human connection, set against the equally true observation that distraction can sometimes function as a kind of medicine. Thundercat has described the concept as twofold, invoking both the soul-destroying scroll of the internet and the gentle redirection a caregiver uses to help someone through pain.

The album is inseparable from Thundercat's personal transformation following Mac Miller's death in 2018, which prompted him to get sober after fifteen years of heavy drinking. Distracted is widely understood as the record made by that rebuilt self: cleaner, sharper, more emotionally direct, and more thematically coherent than his previous solo work.

The album received widespread critical acclaim, earning a Metacritic score in the mid-eighties and frequent descriptions as his most unified and mature work to date.