Flying Lotus – “Black Heaven”
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Flying Lotus joined Gilles Peterson on his BBC Radio 6 Music show yesterday to pay tribute to Ras G. The late LA producer co-founded Poo-Bah Records and was associated with FlyLo’s Brainfeeder. He died last Monday at the age of 40.
On yesterday’s episode, Flying Lotus played a new song called “Black Heaven.” He recorded the track with Ras G the last time that they were together. FlyLo called Ras G “a dear friend, an ally in the sonic warfare.” He continues, “He’s one of those people that I just thought would be here forever. But, thankfully, we have his music that will be here forever, and his influence will live on in me and everyone else who was inspired by him.”
Flying Lotus spoke about the last time he saw Ras G on the episode, titled “Celebrating Ras G”:
The last time I saw G was really special to me, and there was something about the timing I just felt was really urgent to go see him. And partially because I had this idea in my brain that’s been kinda brewing for the past couple years. I had this idea for a movie, and I really wanted Ras G to be a consultant on it because of some of the subject matter in the film. So, I went to go see him and I told him a bunch about this idea that I had, and he started kicking over some cool ideas, and we started just going back and forth about it. It was really, really cool. He even gave me the title for it, in the end, called Black Heaven. And, I thought, That’s a great title. I wish I could tell y’all what the movie’s actually about. You know, I’m more inspired now than ever to write it and to finish it and to make sure it exists.
Also, that same night at Spacebase, we started messing around with some music, and I pulled out my little keyboard from my backpack and I just started playing some stuff and told him to record it. And he was saying, you know, “We don’t even need to record no drums. You just play that stuff. It sounds like movie scenes. It sounds like scenes in your mind. What does this scene sound like to you?” I just kept playing, and then he started recording. The next day, he sent me something back, and it was titled “Black Heaven.”
Listen to “Black Heaven” and hear FlyLo talk about Ras G below. Listen to the full episode here.