The Red Bull Music Academy is a global series of music workshops and festivals: a platform for those who make a difference in today’s musical landscape. This February, Red Bull Music Academy will bring its unique perspective to San Francisco with a format much like the actual Red Bull Music Academy, except in terms of duration. Featuring some of the most buzzed about creative names in music, Red Bull Music Academy Bass Camp will bring together music makers from across the West for three days to hear lectures by local musical legends, collaborate in the studio and perform at public events in the city’s cult venues, serving as a taster of what’s in store when the Academy heads to Tokyo next fall.
ErykahBadu needs little introduction. Her seminal works like Baduizm and the New AmErykah series have successively upped the ante in terms of what can be done within the soul spectrum, fusing cosmic b-girl bravado with the forward-thinking sounds of producers like the Soulquarians, Madlib, and Flying Lotus to create a sonically varied body of work, selling millions of albums in the process. ErykahBadu also heads up her own record label, Control FreaQ, and has even been caught on the ones and twos recently, as the mysterious DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown.
THUNDERCAT
Bassist/songwriter/vocalist Stephen Bruner, aka Thundercat, has music deeply rooted within. His father, Ronald Bruner, Sr., is an internationally renowned jazz drummer who played with the Temptations, Diana Ross, Gary Bartz and Gladys Knight. His brother Ronald Bruner, Jr., a Grammy-winning drummer, has played with the likes of Roy Hargrove, Stanley Clarke, and Wayne Shorter. Stephen joined his brother as a member of West Coast punk vets Suicidal Tendencies, playing bass on their worldwide tours while still in high school. He also toured through Japan with Stanley Clarke at the age of 16.
As Thundercat, Bruner takes his jazz roots and works with a mix of artists that suit his wildly experimental sensibilities – ranging from Flying Lotus, ErykahBadu, and Stanley Clarke, as well as more recent collaborations with Wiz Khalifa and Earl Sweatshirt, to name but a few. After meeting and touring with Flying Lotus, the two artists collaborated on Lotus’ 2010 LP ‘Cosmogramma’ on the track ‘MmmHmm.’ Their kindred sense of musicality led to Thundercat’s 2011 solo debut ‘The Golden Age of Apocalypse,’ co-produced by Flying Lotus, which opened Bruner up to a new stratosphere of songwriting and artistic exploration.
COSMO BAKER
Quite simply, Cosmo Baker is New York’s best and most exciting party-rocking DJ. he is a master of hip-hop, a king of disco & funk, a don of electronic dance music, and his unique style and skill is able to bring it all together to rock crowds of thousands around the globe.