Flying Lotus Talks WOKE, His New Project With Shabazz Palaces and Thundercat

Photo by Tim Saccenti

Yesterday, Flying Lotus, Shabazz Palaces, and Thundercat announced a new collaborative project called WOKE. They also released their first single, “The Lavishments of Light Looking”, featuring Parliament-Funkadelic legend George Clinton. Pitchfork hopped on the phone with FlyLo to talk about the project’s origins, working with Clinton, their future plans, and more. 

Pitchfork: How did the project first come together?

Flying Lotus: The WOKE project started about three years ago. I, myself, and some screenwriter friends of mine started writing a script  for feature film called WOKE. It was something that we developed for quite a while. Initially, it was going to star Ishmael [Butler] from Shabazz Palaces and Jeremiah Jae. We worked on it for a while, started workshopping, but there’s always the financial issue—I haven’t found anyone who is going to invest in the film.

But I wanted to keep the project going somehow. It’s about music, it’s about musicians, and so I decided, Why don’t we just try and build up some momentum through music and maybe do the film after? We started working earlier this year on music. We did a few songs. We have a few things. We’re just going to let it build naturally, see what happens. We’re not going to rush to finish it. Jeremiah Jae is also part of WOKE too, but maybe more so as a producer. I’m not sure. We haven’t really defined anything, really, other than the fact that we’re going to keep working on stuff.

Pitchfork: Does that mean you don’t have any plans to release an album?

FL: There’s nothing set in stone. We have a bunch of ideas. There’s about like nine songs kind of floating around. There’s more stuff with George [Clinton], too. We’ve done a lot of recording over this year. I want to make sure that all the stuff that we do is in the same room together. I’m not trying to do e-mail shit; I really want it to be organic and a true collaboration.

Pitchfork: How did you involve George Clinton in the project?

FL: George—he kind of naturally started floating around too, man. He and I had been in touch earlier this year, and he joined me at Glastonbury. When he comes out to Los Angeles, he comes to the studio and we lay out some ideas. He happened to be around when we were working on the song, so it was perfect that it worked out that way. George is amazing. He’s so sharp and he’s got so many ideas still. It’s such a crazy thing witnessing him and his process.

Pitchfork: Where did the name WOKE come from?

FL: The script has a lot to do with dreams and stuff and astral experiences, so the title just kinda fit. I don’t know what the spark was that made the name, but then I just decided on WOKE because it was just very simple and very much what the film is about. 

Pitchfork: How did “The Lavishments of Light Looking” come together in the studio? 

FL: That song is one of the first songs that we came up with, Ishmael and myself. He flew into L.A. and stayed at my house for a few days; we knocked out a bunch of ideas, and this was the one that I just kinda started building out. He came here and I would just make tracks, and he would be writing, and then we would have something recorded. We have a bunch of ideas, not all of them finished, but a lot of good starting points. This was the first one that we just had to follow through on, and Ish works really fast. He gets all of his ideas out really fast and he was pretty much waiting on me to do my verse for a very long time, because it takes me forever to get into the headspace and vocals. For him, it’s like nothing.

Hopefully we get to hear him on the production at some point, and just turn it around. I want different production, too. I want Thundercat to produce songs. I want Jeremiah Jae to produce some stuff and I want Ishmael and Shabazz to produce some stuff, and then maybe I’ll do the vocals. I want to mix it up a little bit.

Pitchfork: Is WOKE something you can see yourself taking on tour?

FL: To be honest, I hope so. The whole point of doing it this way was we were like, let’s just see what happens if we put this one out there, see if people fuck with it, see if people want this to continue. If that’s the case, yeah, we’ve already been talking about how awesome it would be. Before the track happened, we just talked about how cool it would be if we got together in the studio. Now, I’m like, What’s going to happen if we actually make this project, or actually make an album, or actually make the film now. You know? So it’s cool. I really hope that it just kind of unfolds naturally, as most things tend to in my creative life.

Watch Flying Lotus and Thundercat on Pitchfork.tv’s “Over/Under”:

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