Flying Lotus and Essay 4: Following on the heels of his 2025 sci-fi horror film, Ash, FlyLo drops his latest EP, BIG MOMMA, and unwittingly becomes the center of the question that's on everyone's minds - What is AI's place in human creativity?

Flying Lotus - BIG MOMMA Review, and Thoughts on AI and Creativity

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This Essay Comes First

Before I can even begin to review Steve Ellison's new music, we have to get a very important topic out of the way. Unfortunately, Ellison decided to become the subject and the question on everyone's minds: Now that AI is traveling at lightning speed, what is its place in our world, human creativity, and integrity? This is a question that needs to be discussed at this point in our collective consciousness. AI is taking over, fooling almost everyone, making all of us give a universal sigh at its ability to fake what many of us might have thought to be genuine, authentic, human moments. This is quite literally the matrix being created before our eyes. 

Flying Lotus - Flamagra Review

Flying Lotus has become an amalgam of jazz, hip-hop, and electronica ever since he burst onto the scene with his minimalist beat-driven debut LP, 1983. A dusty, stripped-down collection of beats and electronic songs which defined him and defined an era of the late 2000s glitch hop scene. Since then, he has continued forward in big and exciting ways, releasing his touchstone classic, Los Angeles, and pushing forward into more styles and genres that all seem to melt into one signature sound in his follow-up works, Cosmogramma, Until The Quiet Comes, and You're Dead! This was a period of serious experimentation and collaboration into the genres of hip-hop, jazz, fusion, and cinematic, orchestrated greatness, and Flying Lotus, aka Steven Ellison, began a wild career full of all-star collaborations on these records. Artists such as Thundercat, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Erykah Badu, Radiohead's Thom Yorke, Snoop Dogg, and Kendrick Lamar, are just a few of the many team-ups gracing Ellison's catalog, and these artists and his forward-driving sound give them all a special place in history. Like Ellison's past work, Flamagra continues this tradition with more of that definitive experimentation in his most dynamic album to date.

Flying Lotus – Pattern+Grid World Review

Brace yourself for a new breed of FlyLo, with a new EP just months after his third full-length space opera, videogame drama, Cosmogramma. There’s more to be heard here, as Steven Ellison, the man behind the mask, takes you somewhere completely different once again.

Teebs - Ardour Review

Teebs, a popular artist on the Brainfeeder record label started by Flying Lotus, releases his debut album and blows all other producers out of the water! His multi-textured compositions come to life in Ardour, arguably one of the best beat albums of 2010. His soft beats and melodic chimes have a fulfilling presence, and I cannot stress it enough that his work bears a therapeutic, healing power for any avid headphones junkie.

The Professionals - The Professionals Review

The Professionals - Self Titled Review

As far as collaborations go, it was only a matter of time before the world heard of The Professionals, the new duo formulated by prolific and eclectic hip-hop producer Madlib and his brother, producer/emcee Oh No.