Launched on April 18th by way of Sub Pop Data, Tunde Adebimpe, the multi-hyphenate expertise and critically acclaimed lead singer of the famend band TV on the Radio, has introduced his lengthy awaited debut solo album, Thee Black Boltz. Pre-order HERE.
The album is produced by Tunde Adebimpe, Wilder Zoby, and govt produced by Zoby, with further manufacturing and contributions from Jaleel Bunton & Jahphet Landis (of TV on the Radio), and extra. Showcasing his distinctive voice and visionary soundscapes, Thee Black Boltz is a nod to Adebimpe’s propensity to put in writing and sing concerning the human situation in all its varieties, underneath all its stressors, each large and small.
Having shared Magnetic final September, right now, Adebimpe has shared the album’s vivid and introspective Drop, produced by Jahphet Landis. Pay attention HERE.
For the final 24 years, Tunde Adebimpe has largely been often known as the co-founder, co-vocalist and principal songwriter for TV On The Radio. The mostly-black, art-rock band triumphed via 20 years of unstable cultural change to develop into some of the beloved, enduring and influential teams from New York Metropolis’s early-2000s rock scene. Although Tunde’s poetic songwriting and clear, towering vocals are central to the band’s dissonant sound, TV On The Radio has and all the time will probably be a collaboration between a bunch of singular musicians.
Tunde’s private story exists on a parallel path, as a kind of inventive polymath. He’s a musician but in addition an illustrator and painter. He’s a former animator and one-time stop-motion filmmaker. He’s a tv and movie actor. And now he’s additionally a solo artist, together with his first-ever formal solo album, Thee Black Boltz (Sub Pop, 2025).
Tunde initially conceived of the album in 2019, whereas TV On The Radio was on a break. Two years later, because the world was rising out of the worldwide Covid pandemic, he began to place concepts down on paper; particularly, a pocket book, which captures a free-thinking mixture of phrases, illustrations and concepts. It’s how Tunde begins most of his initiatives. Included on this pocket book was a listing of musical references and visible sketches that constituted what he calls, ”mixtape of feelings the music might evoke. A sense map of kinds.” He began capturing these concepts in 2021 with the assistance of multi-instrumentalist Wilder Zoby (Run The Jewels), with whom he shares a studio with in Los Angeles.
A baby of Nigerian immigrants who got here to America for a greater life, Tunde cut up his youth between Nigeria and Pittsburgh. His father was a medical skilled who beloved to doodle and draw, and in doing so, ignited a ardour for visible artwork in his youngsters. ”I keep in mind the primary time I noticed that he might draw, like actually draw,” Tunde remembers. ”It was like he revealed some superpower. From then on, I used to be all the time doodling and he was very encouraging.”
Tunde moved to New York to attend faculty and located himself amongst a bunch of buddies immersed in indie rock, tape-trading and zine-making. He found that inventive expression, usually visible, was a language he felt most snug with; that artwork allowed him to finest talk his emotions and in addition to make sense of the world round him. NYU Movie Faculty adopted (a lot to his dad and mom’ chagrin), and it was there Tunde developed an curiosity on the earth of stop-motion animation. It in the end led to a job engaged on MTV’s cult hit, Celeb Deathmatch.
Movie college can be the place Tunde was launched to performing. ”I believed I needed to be a director, however I didn’t really feel snug giving anybody actual instruction,” he laughs. ”However I took path effectively, and being in entrance of the digital camera felt extra collaborative, extra my pace.”
Across the identical time as he was taking pictures his first film, Tunde was additionally experimenting with making music. Making 4-track recordings in his bed room and doing noise exhibits together with his buddies utilized the identical inventive muscular tissues, he discovered, as making tapes and zines. ”I don’t play an instrument. However it was one of many first occasions that I actually bought into only a punk ethos of like, if in case you have an thought, simply get it out. It doesn’t have to be excellent. You don’t want a label or billboards. You are able to do the whole lot your self.”
It was doing these 4-track songs and shifting to Williamsburg in 2000 that led Tunde to satisfy Dave Sitek and his brother, and their collective lo-fi recordings grew to become the genesis for TV On The Radio.
Thee Black Boltz is just not a TV On The Radio album. However in a variety of methods, the thrill of doing one thing on his personal for the primary time ignited an identical spark in him as throughout the early TV On The Radio days. The songwriting course of is similar, he says, however together with his TVOTR bandmates, Adebimpe is aware of he doesn’t all the time have to finish his concepts. ”I’ve been doing this factor with this group of individuals for therefore lengthy, that I can simply have a imprecise sketch of an idea and I do know Jaleel or Kyp may have 5 sensible concepts on the place it could go,” he says. ”However for Thee Black Boltz, I didn’t have that scaffolding to hold on. That was each terrifying and exhilarating.”
On the coronary heart of the album is its title. It’s his response to the macro unease of a post-pandemic world careening in direction of violent authoritarianism and the non-public grief that has come from loss lately, particularly the sudden passing of his youthful sister whereas making it. Thee Black Boltz is Adebimpe’s determined greedy of small moments of pleasure amidst the dissonance and disappointment, any means he can. ”It was my means of constructing a rock or a platform for myself in the course of this fucking ocean,” he says on the makings of the album as a technique of processing the whole lot occurring in his life.
And thus, Thee Black Boltz. ”The sparks of inspiration/motivation / hope that flash up within the midst of (and typically on account of) deep grief, melancholy or despair. Form of like electrons build up in storm clouds clashing till they fireplace off lightning and illuminate a means out, if just for a second,” he writes in his pocket book. ”Additionally,” he provides, ‘it’s an excellent identify for a cool metallic band, and I believe that most individuals would describe me as akin to a really cool metallic band.”
~
Thee Black Boltz tracklisting:
1. Thee Black Boltz
2. Magnetic
3. Ate The Moon
4. Pinstack
5. Drop
6. ILY
7. The Most
8. God Is aware of
9. Blue
10. Anyone New
11. Streetlight Nuevo
Tunde Adebimpe | Instagram | Spotify | Apple Music
Images by Xaviera Simmons ©
We’ve got a small favour to ask. Subscribe to Louder Than Conflict and assist preserve the flame of unbiased music burning. Click on the button beneath to see the extras you get!