Flying Lotus Breaks Down 8 Perfectly Produced Records

The Producers is an interview series where our favorite artists discuss their favorite music production.

Flying Lotus has spent the last 20 years taking everything we know about beatmaking and shooting it, unshielded, into outer space. From early works like his 2006 debut album, 1983, which got an anniversary reissue last month, to more recent projects like his latest EP, Big Mama, or the score for his 2025 movie Ash, his blends of rap, ambient, electronic, and jazz feel sourced both from his native California and some galaxy on the other side of the Crab Nebula where Ren & Stimpy and old Madlib music videos are the only things on TV. As a producer, DJ, filmmaker, and head of indie label Brainfeeder, which helped put artists like Thundercat and Kamasi Washington on the map, FlyLo is constantly moving forward, searching for music's next evolution. 

He admits that search can get more difficult as time goes on. When we link a Japanese restaurant in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, with the 1983 reissue in mind, the 42-year-old is particularly reflective between bites of edamame and sips of sake. “The beauty of those times was just the curiosity behind it and the unknown,” he explains, thinking back to the start of his career. “There was something about the music I was making—I won’t say it was uncharted territory, but there was so much to explore. It wasn’t a whole scene then like it is now; it felt like we had so much potential to the way we were turning beats away from just the rappers and crafting a producer world. I was curious to see how far we could take it. It was also more difficult to do everything, so it forced me to be really creative. Maybe people liked me more when I didn’t know anything.” 

Relistening to 1983, which was named for the year he was born, you can hear the hallmarks FlyLo has been tweaking ever since: the incessant crate-digging of Madlib, the lop-sided drums and digital glitz of producers like J Dilla and Daedalus, the jazzy swing he’s predisposed to as the great nephew of jazz pianist Alice Coltrane. While FlyLo’s gone grander over the last couple of decades, the sophistication and range of his music is as evident on 1983 standouts “Bad Actors” or “Pet Monster Shotglass” as it is on anything from the cosmic funk of You’re Dead! or the lush futuristic Afro-Japanese fusion of his score for the anime Yasuke. His signature eclecticism as a producer made me want to quiz him about the records that inspired his sound most. 

Several of FlyLo’s picks for The Producers revolve around the funk and groove of his homebase of California, alongside some Detroit hip-hop, funk from Motown, and even a bit of classic rock from the UK. He’s a worldly otaku with a pristine ear that’s always open, still.      

Marvin Gaye: Let’s Get It On

Producers: Marvin Gaye and Ed Townsend

Flying Lotus: I’d never listened to this album all the way through until last year. It was like falling in love with a band or an artist you’d never heard. All year, I was just in Marvin Gaye world and taking in the catalog because I was only enjoying it on the surface level before. I was so moved by the timelessness of it and the quality of the recordings, just next level. You had to be at that time. That’s the big difference between then and now: You couldn’t go to the studio with no chops, man. 

A song like “Distant Lover” has so many little deep textures, like it’s underwater nostalgic. The production was trying to capture the era that Marvin came from, which might have been over by the time he recorded this album. 

At this point, do you see yourself in that idea of trying to encapsulate the era that raised you?

Yeah, with some of the things I was going through last year, that album really affected me. It was doing the thing you hope music does for you. It was helping me tap into my emotions.

Queen: “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke”

Producers: Queen and Roy Thomas Baker

That song is quite the anomaly. It’s so weird and heady to play on some musical shit, really complicated. Somehow, they were able to navigate the pop-rock stuff and the hard stuff. It’s unpredictable, and I’ve found that to be so inspiring. The music they chose, the sounds, the recording. It’s just weird. 

You’re Dead! was kinda inspired by me falling in love with the music of Queen. Their album Queen II was one of those things Thundercat and I would play like, Yo, we gotta go to these places, fuck all this other shit.

Curtis Mayfield: “Eddie You Should Know Better”

Producer: Curtis Mayfield

Ultimate player music right here. I live in L.A., and that just sounds like the L.A. streets at night. It sounds like riding around in a convertible—I used to have one a long time ago, and it reminds me of cruising in that shit. That production, the lushness of it, the strings, everything’s recorded and executed so perfectly. Curtis is next level. I have the instrumentals to that Super Fly album, and they’re top-notch as well. It’s one of those albums that’s been with me for as long as I’ve cared about music. 

David Axelrod: “The Edge”

Producer: David Axelrod 

I tried to arrange this list in a way that would bring it to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.,” which sampled this song. I remember digging into Axelrod when I was working at Stones Throw. I was there and Egon, who was a big record finder, was playing all this David Axelrod stuff, and I was like, Why is this production so lush and crazy? Why is this both hip-hop and not at the same time? What do you even call this? Spiritual funk? Orchestral funk? That’s what it is right there. 

Snoop Dogg: “Gz Up, Hoes Down”

Producer: Dr. Dre

That’s a rare cut now. They took it off all the other versions of Doggystyle, but it was on the tape I had. I had to dub a tape from a friend because it was pretty controversial for a 10-year-old to have that album back in the day. So I listened to it in my headphones all day, and it was crazy. Obviously the raps were fun and cool, but it was the beats, man. At this point, there wasn’t this lush loop jacking and getting samples replayed by world-class musicians in studios and shit. I fell in love with the idea of producing from that album. Seeing Dr. Dre do his thing, not in the limelight but getting to kick back and do all the fun stuff, or at least what I thought was fun, that was really appealing to me. 

Slum Village: “Players”

Producer: J Dilla

Dilla really opened up the possibilities of what could be done with samples. For so long, people were so fixated on getting a two or four-bar loop out of a sample, where he’d get little pieces of a thing and make it sound like it was a four-bar loop. Outside of the cleverness of the chops, the sound of that beat is crazy. Bob Power engineered that. There’s also something about beats that come out of those old MPCs or the SP-1200, just this textural thing that you know when you hear. That stuff just screams good MPC music. 

I remember being at grandma’s house and taking a blunt ride around the cul-de-sac blasting “Players” loud as hell and then going back to the house to make beats smelling like blunts. It was so inspiring hearing what he could do just using these little machines. I was like, Why doesn’t it sound like that when I use it? [laughs]

Mausberg: “Get Nekkid”

Producer: DJ Quik

I had to throw some DJ Quik-ness in there. I was playing this the other day in the studio and a guy in there with me was like, “That sounds like ‘King Kunta!’” And I’m like, “Yeah, motherfuckers didn’t just generate that out of nowhere.” That original Mausberg song baaaaangs. It hurts, it slaps so hard, and it’s funky as hell. He’s saying some crazy shit in that song, but that shit is a banger. It’s got that Parliament, that Zapp vibe to it. Low-rider shit. Just wanna smack some shit in the Cali sunshine.  

Madvillain: “Accordion”

Producer: Madlib

Madvillainy was super special to me because that was part of the big spark that got me producing for real, taking it from a thing I did for fun to the thing I wanted to get serious about. I was living in San Francisco and going to art school for film, and my buddy put me onto Doom and Madlib and El-P and Cannibal Ox. I really took to Doom and Madlib’s stuff, and then it was like, They did something together?! I remember downloading the original from Limewire and being in school knowing the real version was coming out. I took the bus to Amoeba Records with my Discman, bought the album, put the CD in my machine. I was in heaven, bro. 

“Accordian” was one of the songs that wasn’t on the demo, and it was a banger. “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Curls” bent my ear in terms of what you could do with samples and what you could sample. You could grab obscure records that weren't just soul records or a well-known James Brown thing. It opened up a whole new universe. 

If you can make the accordion swing, you can do anything. 

Why does that shit bang so hard?!