Flying Lotus
American record producer from California
Steven Ellison (born October 7, 1983), better known as Flying Lotus or sometimes FlyLo, is an American record producer, DJ, filmmaker, and rapper. He has released seven critically acclaimed albums: 1983 (2006), Los Angeles (2008), Cosmogramma (2010), Until the Quiet Comes (2012), You're Dead! (2014), Flamagra (2019), and Yasuke (2021). Flying Lotus' other work includes creating the record label Brainfeeder, producing much of Adult Swim's bumper music, releasing rap mixtapes such as Duality (2012) under his Captain Murphy alter ego, curating and hosting the in-game radio station FlyLo FM in Grand Theft Auto V (2013), and directing the sci-fi horror film Ash (2025).
Early life
Flying Lotus was born Steven Ellison in Los Angeles on October 7, 1983. He has Cameroonian ancestry, being descended from the Tikar people. He is the grandson of singer-songwriter Marilyn McLeod, best known for writing hits such as the Diana Ross song "Love Hangover" and the Freda Payne song "I Get High (On Your Memory)". McLeod's sister Alice Coltrane was a jazz pianist who was married to saxophonist John Coltrane, and was named by The Fader as the biggest influence on Flying Lotus' music. He attended the Los Angeles Film School and Academy of Art University.
Musical career
2006–2007: Adult Swim, 1983, and Warp Records
In 2006, while at his mother's house, Ellison saw an advertisement on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block asking for song submissions.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Flying Lotus” is american record producer from California. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Flying, Lotus and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q139121. VIAF identifies the subject as 121197219. The Library of Congress control number is no2010074069. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2006, 2008 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Flying Lotus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.