What Is Flying Lotus’ “Never Catch Me” About? LA’s Dance With Death

“Never Catch Me” is Los Angeles producer Flying Lotus teaming with Kendrick Lamar for a restless, joyful song about outrunning death, released as a single ahead of his 2014 album You’re Dead!. Its Hiro Murai–directed video turns a children’s funeral into a dance party, as two kids climb out of their caskets and escape.

The Album Behind the Song

Flying Lotus is the stage name of Steven Ellison, the L.A. producer and great-nephew of jazz great Alice Coltrane. He recorded You’re Dead!, his fifth album, at his home in Los Angeles and released it on Warp Records on October 6, 2014. It is a concept album about death and the afterlife, which he described to Rolling Stone as “an aural journey about the spirit leaving the body.” The guest list matched the ambition: Herbie Hancock, Snoop Dogg, Thundercat on bass across nearly every track, and Kendrick Lamar on track five, “Never Catch Me.”

What Is “Never Catch Me” About?

Warp released the song as a single on September 3, 2014. Ellison produced it and co-wrote it with Lamar, who rides the frantic, jazz-fusion beat with a rapid-fire verse while Thundercat holds down the low end and vocals. Set inside an album about dying, the track plays like a taunt aimed at death itself. Director Hiro Murai told Okayplayer that while the record is about death, the song has a childlike, teasing energy, and he built the video around that feeling.

Inside the Funeral Dance Video

The video, released in October 2014, opens on a mournful church funeral for two children, with Flying Lotus and Thundercat among the mourners. Then the kids sit up, burst out of their coffins and dance up the aisle, eventually driving off in a hearse while other children chase after them. Flying Lotus’ original idea, Murai said, was a story about a Black boy who was late to his own funeral; Murai reshaped it into a dance piece for two kids. On set, several parents were moved to tears seeing their children in caskets.

Awards and Legacy

Pitchfork named “Never Catch Me” Best New Track and ranked it No. 23 on its list of 2014’s best songs, and Stereogum put the clip at No. 1 among the year’s videos. The video earned two 2015 MTV Video Music Award nominations, winning Best Cinematography, and the song was nominated for Best Dance Recording at the 58th Grammy Awards. You’re Dead! peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard 200.

Quick answers

What album is “Never Catch Me” on? Flying Lotus’ fifth album, You’re Dead!, released October 6, 2014, on Warp Records.

Who directed the “Never Catch Me” video? Hiro Murai, who first connected with Flying Lotus through a short film he made with Donald Glover for a Childish Gambino project.

Did “Never Catch Me” win any awards? Its video won Best Cinematography at the 2015 MTV VMAs, and the song earned a Grammy nomination for Best Dance Recording.