Thundercat performs at Portola Festival in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2023. Gavin Legaspi/STAFF. Funk bassist Thundercat, soul crooner Lee Fields and Bay Area cumbia septet Combo Tezeta will perform a free show at Robin Williams Meadow in Golden Gate Park on Oct. 20, courtesy of local concert producer…

Kamasi Washington, “Fearless Movement.” Historically, jazz has been under-appreciated as a genre in America. Legitimate musical geniuses, towering greats like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, had to travel to Europe, escaping American racism to find audiences sophisticated enough to dig what they were doing. It’s both a…

Skrillex performs at Portola Festival in San Francisco on Oct. 1, 2023. Photos: Gavin Legaspi and Chloe Catajan/STAFF. SAN FRANCISCO — For the second day in a row, Portola Festival delivered an enticing lineup of dance, hip-hop and underground acts, even as intermittent light rain and chilly weather settled…

Kehlani, “blue water road.” “It’s only your passion how you move by,” Kehlani sang at the end of their 2020 track “Open (Passionate).” Even if it’s a lyric that describes someone else, it surmises Kehlani’s approach to both songwriting and vocal delivery perfectly. And their ability to present lucid and…

Thundercat performs at the Stern Grove Festival in San Francisco on Aug. 8, 2021. Matt Pang/STAFF SAN FRANCISCO — Concertgoers turned out in colorful variety Sunday to see Los Angeles’ Thundercat perform at Stern Grove Festival. Despite the overcast sky, the tree-lined natural amphitheater was packed. Ladies in leather…

RIFF photographers’ best work in 2020 included these shots of Poppy, Seventeen, The Struts, Colony House, Little Image, KISS, Injury Reserve, Suzi Analogue, Elbow, Tones & I, Thundercat, Thrice, Tove Lo, George Clinton and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. In this abbreviated year of concerts, we asked our photographers to provide…

The best albums of 2020 include (clockwise from top left): Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, Caribou, The Chicks, Joji, Nathaniel Rateliff, Deftones, he Psychedelic Furs, Open Mike Eagle and Thundercat. Now we’re getting into the really good stuff. If you missed the still-good-but-not-quite-as-good stuff you can find 75-61, 60-51, 50-41, 40-31 and…

Few musicians today can compete with the resume of Stephen Bruner, better known as Thundercat. Bruner developed his virtuosic stringmanship alongside some of L.A.’s brightest talents. He was instrumental to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly (widely regarded as Lamar’s best) and collaborated on albums by Erykah Badu and jazz bandleader…

Thundercat performs at the Fox Theater in Oakland on March 6, 2020. Onome Uyovbievbo/STAFF. OAKLAND — Stephen Lee Bruner is a man who can really play the hell out of the bass guitar. He proved it again on Friday night, guiding his jazz trio through multiple structural breakdowns and outlandish…

Steven Ellison’s legacy far predates his role in Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 landmark album, To Pimp a Butterfly. As Flying Lotus, his glitchy, abstract production has continually pushed hip-hop’s artistic boundaries. In 2006, Los Angeles set a new standard for L.A. beat music, while 2010’s Cosmograma transcended genre boundaries as a nu-jazz space odyssey.…