Album Review: Thee Black Boltz by Tunde Adebimpe

The TV On The Radio frontman’s highly accomplished, elegantly performed, wonderfully sung debut solo album is the work of a master craftsman There was always something that stood out about TV On The Radio, especially compared to their more raucous peers – Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, The Strokes et al. They seemed more composed, more mature, more 'put together'… more complete? Part of this composure was due to them having an excellent producer in-house (David Sitek – who has ended up producing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' entire discography) and, in powerhouse frontman Tunde Adebimpe, someone who seemed much too sensible to be dragged into whatever nonsense the NME tried to saddle the other bands with. Since the last TV On The Radio album, Seeds, came out in 2014, Adebimpe has been mostly acting in a variety of projects from movies (Spider-Man: Homecoming and Twisters) to regular television (Star Wars: Skeleton Crew) and animation (Strange Planet and Lazer Wulf).

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Thee Black Boltz was a long time in the making: with interruptions, Adebimpe worked on it from late 2019 to the spring of 2024. During this period, the world witnessed a pandemic, and he lost his beloved younger sister. Making this album allowed him to process it all: "It was my way of building a rock or a platform for myself in the middle of this fucking ocean".

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Tunde Adebimpe is best known for his work with TV on the Radio, a band he co-founded and serves as co-vocalist and principal songwriter. TV on the Radio are distinguishable from their indie rock peers, not just because the members are mostly Black, but due to the creative energy they bring to the process. Even if there is something distinctly New York about them, like echoes of a cappella heard on a row house porch stoop, they integrate universal qualities that extend beyond their urban surroundings.

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Tunde Adebimpe is best known as the vocalist for New York 00s indie titans TV on The Radio. He has also forged a successful career as an actor appearing in Star Wars series Skeleton Crew and the blockbuster Twisters in 2024. He now brings out his debut LP ‘Thee Black Boltz’ an eclectic mix that shows off a different side to him as an artist.

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For the past two decades, Tunde Adebimpe's voice has been synonymous with the shapeshifting sound of TV on the Radio, a band with a track record for being a complex instrument of gritty emotion, poetic unease and seemingly limitless experimentation. Now, Tunde's solo debut 'Thee Black Boltz' calls forth a new reckoning. The record is introduced by its title track, a dialled-in spoken word piece which serves as a core transmission with messages of settling love and hate, consolidating happiness and sadness.

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