The Fire This Time: Flying Lotus Seeks Rebirth After Mac Miller's Death
I want Flying Lotus to score my reincarnation.
The thought hit me barely ten minutes into the headlining set of his Flamagra tour stop in Atlanta. As I sat in the balcony wearing plastic 3D glasses, a kaleidoscopic maze of images and flames projected from the screen behind his booth seemed to swallow him whole. At one point a virtual spacecraft that'd give P-Funk's Mothership a run for its money extended overhead and invited me aboard for some trippy astral traveling. I couldn't even blame what I was seeing on the watery cocktail the bartender served me earlier. I was totally sober.
But one doesn't need 3D glasses to feel FlyLo's music. Critics have argued over his genre distinctions plenty: Is he jazz, funk, electro, hip-hop, experimental? It's a pointless exercise because, of course, the answer is yes. Always, yes. Like the trickster god Elegua, he sits at a crossroads where even the cosmic is comic.
Yet the producer, musician and rapper who's soundtracked the afterlife on albums like You're Dead certainly hasn't escaped its grip. Throughout his career, death has served as a recurring source of pain but also a portal of inspiration. The last year alone has been bookended by the loss of his good friends and collaborators Mac Miller, who he pays tribute to with two songs on Flamagra, and L.A. beat scene artist Ras G, who released music on FlyLo's Brainfeeder label.
That trauma belies the enduring sense of hope that underlines his latest release.'s 27 songs conjuring new heroes from an "eternal flame."
