Late night television was full of killer Halloween musical moments last night, whether it was Millie Bobby Brown’s rap recap of Stranger Things‘ first season or Dave Grohl, in full David Letterman costume, guest-hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! and mashing up Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Frozen with Kristen Bell. Thundercat got in on the dress-up fun as well: He sat in with Jon Batiste And Stay Human on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last night, wearing a Dragon Ball Z-inspired outfit and performing the jazzy “Them Changes,” from his 2017 album Drunk, with the Colbert house band.
For the record, this isn’t Thundercat’s first brush with Dragon Ball Z, as he referenced the anime a couple different times in his song “Tokyo,” with the lyrics, “Don’t try to stop me ’cause I’m over 9000 / Just point me to the pachinko machines / I think I’m Kenshiro, I think that I’m Goku / Can I just stay one more day,” and, “This all started when I was a boy / I went to the dentist and he gave me a toy / It was Dragon Ball Z, a wrist-slap bracelet / Goku f*cking ruined me.”
He also previously talked in depth about anime, and once gave a well-supported reason for why Vegeta is his favorite character from the show:
“Because he’s the underdog and he had the moments to shine and they better do some shit to dragon ball super or whatever the f*ck they call it now. Vegeta better start whooping ass and come into fruition. Vegeta was the wondering warrior, he’s the living struggle. Vegeta is in realtime, he’s John Malkovich.”
Watch Thundercat’s performance of “Them Changes” above.
