Stephen Bruner’s early career was a roller coaster of emotional tumult: while his first two albums featured the word Apocalypse in the title, the first (The Golden Age of Apocalypse) was a good-vibe iteration of all his formative influences as a Stanley Clarke/George Duke-enthused fusionist, and its just-plain-Apocalypse followup used that sound to explore the personal turmoil of confronting death in the wake of his good friend Austin Peralta’s passing. Drunk is where he seems to have come to terms with the heartbreaks and setbacks of life, and is working his way through the schlep of getting back to living it. He’s still upset about shit, but in ways that feel bittersweetly weird instead of melancholy. The sour boogie of the Mono/Poly-produced “Friend Zone” strips away all the risible incel rhetoric to get at the big ridiculous annoyance of a thwarted relationship so embittering that it sends you into an angry-gamer fugue state. (It’s also his peak as a singer; his wounded falsetto, multi-tracked into harmonic wonderment, contains one of the flat-out prettiest threats to throw someone in the garbage.) FlyLo collab “Them Changes” pulls off the chutzpah of going to the same Isleys “Footsteps in the Dark” well that Ice Cube did for its shiver-step drum break by turning Marvin’s bassline inside out and bringing in Kamasi Washington to sneak in a vibrant sax coda during the fadeout, all for the purpose of describing the loss of his heart. But that’s just the endpoint of a manic journey from monotony-breaking spontaneity and silliness (envying the life of his cat on “A Fan’s Mail (Tron Song Suite II)”; going full otaku tourist in “Tokyo”), punctuated with moments of Apocalypse‘s reflective doubt (confrontations with death “Lava Lamp” and “Jethro”) before culminating in a mess of frustrated, intoxicated rumination that leaves the future looking a bit more cyclical than it should. Huge-name guests abound, but even when we experience the closest Pharrell has gotten to sounding like Marvin in beatific social-justice mode (“The Turn Down”) or the kind of conflicted Kendrick verse (“Walk on By”) that made him rap’s most formidable philosopher since Nas or an honest-to-god full-power dose of Michael McDonald/Kenny Loggins smoothness (“Show You the Way”), Thundercat’s careful balance of eclectic muso depth and shitposter absurdity is what keeps Drunk together, even when it feels ready to collapse from its own fast-moving spiral into intoxication.