Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is always putting on for California. It’s no secret the legendary rock star is a huge Kobe Bryant and Lakers fan, but now we know he’s a fan of Vince Staples as well.
Like a lot of us, Flea took the weekend to really get into the Long Beach rapper’s new album Dark Times, and he loved it, posting on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter, that he felt the album is “so deep and good.”
Flea is no stranger to hip-hop. The Red Hot Chili Peppers came up during the era when MTV ran the world and Flea was a mainstay on the Rock N’ Jock B-Ball Jam court alongside rappers like Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Michael Bivins and Marky Mark.
Back in 2016, he appeared in an episode of Amoeba Music’s What’s in My Bag alongside writer and producer Amy-Jo Albany. They both talked about the records they picked at Amoeba Music’s store in Hollywood, including the handful of J Dilla records Flea purchased. He referred to the late Detroit producer as “an absolutely transcendent, phenomenal musician” and decided to zero in on the 2007 reissue of Dilla’s Ruff Draft. The bassist got emotional recalling a time he listened to the project while on a hike. “I was in Big Sur by myself and I had on headphones and I was walking around these trails in the mountains listening to it, and it just touched this thing in me so deeply. I just couldn’t stop crying. It was so powerful,” he said as he held back tears.
Coincidentally, Vince Staples gives a nod to L.A.-based Stones Throw Records (the same label that released Ruff Draft) on the track “Radio” from his new album, rapping, “A better day was just a stones throw away/KDAY would play the records that my sister would say/Was realer than whatever I listened to/When I got older, I realized it was true.”
And in 2019, during an interview with New York’s ALT92.3 radio station, Flea mentioned Thundercat when asked about his favorite new artist. Obviously Thundercat is genre-bending in his own right, but the musician famously worked on To Pimp a Butterfly and was very close with the late Mac Miller. In short, he’s hip-hop too.
The world could use more rap reviews from Flea.
