You may recognize Kirk A Johnson on drums, Mono Neon on bass and Adrian Crutchfield on sax and electric woodwinds as the house band 4 Prince’s Paisley Park After Dark Jam Sessions. Well, that’s not all they do. 4 the past week they’ve been cutting basic trax 4 their as yet untitled debut album. With Prince producing and handling the keyboard & guitar duties, the set promises 2 b picking up right where Judith Hill’s BACK IN TIME left off. These brothas murder the funk! Normally they wouldn’t let a track out until it’s finished, but this one had 2 go! It was ruining everybody’s good loox. If U think U can resist the funk, check out the key change of Mono’s bass solo at near 4 o'clockmark
Thomas was raised in a musical family, the son of a bass Guitarist. He began playing bass at the age of four years, independent of formal lessons (self-taught). When he was about 11 or 12 years old, he performed with Bar-Kays, playing solo bass guitar. At age 14, he played bass with the South Soul Rhythm Section, the band performed at the Porretta Soul Festival 2006. South Soul was a group of young Musicians from Stax Music Academy.
In 2009, Thomas was featured on the GospelChops Bass Sessionz Vol.1 project with Andrew Gouche, Hadrien Feraud, Damian Erskine, Janek Gwizdala, Anthony Nembhard, and Robert "Bubby" Lewis.
MonoNeon performed with Sheri Jones-Moffett (2010 Grammy nominee) at the Recording Academy Chapter 40th Anniversary Celebration at Levitt Shell.
The idea of conceptual art plays a role in his musical compositions, as reflected in his early 2011 recordings. Thomas began creating a vague idea of bass and AM/FM radio improvisations. The improvisations/compositions are based on radio art. Some of the bass and radio improvisations/compositions can be heard on his album entitled, Introspection of PolyNeon. The "Polyneon" concept is something Thomas created through introspection and when he stopped thinking about the worldly idea of becoming or being a great musician.
In 2012, Thomas joined David Fiuczynski and Planet Microjam. Also in 2012, he released his solo avant-garde album, Down-to-Earth Art as MonoNeon.
MonoNeon was featured in the January/February 2013 issue of Dig! Magazine, a Winnipeg jazz magazine.
One of MonoNeon's bass cover videos performing KNOWER's arrangement/medley of Lady Gaga songs was voted Top 10 most watched video on NoTreble (March 2014).
In 2015 MonoNeon began playing bass with Prince and his protégé, Judith Hill. Some of the live shows have been at Paisley Park.
On 11 January 2016, Tidal released the track Ruff Enuff by MonoNeon, only four and a half days after its initial recording. The instrumental track features Prince as Producer and on keyboards. The following day, the track was replaced with a vocal version with lead vocals on vocoder by Adrian Crutchfield.
