Tunde Adebimpe Starts a Conversation on Thee Black Boltz
After two decades shaping the pulse of art-rock through TV On The Radio, Adebimpe remains defiantly human on his debut album, meditating in the chaos of creativity and untethered by genre—still evolving; still electric.
When TV on the Radio reunited to play their first shows in five years last fall, it wasn’t a wonted case of a band simply reuniting. It was more sincere, more consequential—a fated resurrection of one of New York’s most shape-shifting art-rock outfits of the aughts. The band is now stepping back into the limelight, touring and reviving the glow of their wholly merited legacy. However, as they reconnect with their roots, frontman Tunde Adebimpe has been branching outward at a rapid pace. In 2024 alone, he racked up acting credits in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and Twisters, signed with Sub Pop, and announced his long-awaited solo debut Thee Black Boltz, which has finally arrived.
Now, I’m always hesitant when I hear that an artist is going solo. Rightfully so, too—going solo is a weighty gamble. At the very least, it tends to brew tension and rumors à la post-N.W.A. or Beatles breakup fallout. And, at its worst, the artist unknowingly slips into the dreaded “musician-turned-actor” purgatory. But Adebimpe, ever an alchemist of weird and brazenly cool creations, continues to sidestep these pitfalls without effort. For over two decades, TV On The Radio has shaped the pulse of indie-rock through their static-soaked soul, yet Adebimpe still moves like lightning from a grounded wire. He’s unafraid to take that creative leap of faith, remaining composed and confident in every step he takes, It’s cemented him as an unmistakable voice in the folds of music history.
On Thee Black Boltz, Tunde Adebimpe is a wholly unplaceable spirit. He’s thriving in collaboration, meditating in creative anima and untethered by expectation—still evolving; still electric. This is no side-bar creative pursuit, but an album scarred by personal loss, most tragically the sudden death of his younger sister. Furthermore, Adebimpe is wrestling with a world in complete political freefall, one still reeling from the pandemic, and yet he dares to search for life within that wreckage. Maybe it’s not purely joyful, but it’s working towards joy, finding a silver lining in each new idea and moment of fluorescent hecticness. And, God, if Thee Black Boltz is ever hectic.
The title track doubles as both an overture and a poem—a service announcement obscured by tape hiss and repeated vocal scratches. “Say we start in the stars / Descend to the mountain / Walk down and through the hillside towns / Settle our love and hate affairs / Walk down through the edge of the wood to the edge of the brook / Sit and lament some happy, sad run / That the base of the mountain / Turn, the black bolts learned / That change is all looking at the stars / The black bolts / I did hear, all / I hear a tune,” Adebimpe recounts. As the tape clicks off, we’re left only a second to reflect upon the scene he has laid out. His peaceful snapshot of nature is immediately doused as “Magnetic” barrels in—a lit fuse for the remainder of the album. There’s a manic feeling of urgency to the music here, with sprinting synths and a stammering drum beat at odds to overtake one another. When it first dropped as a single, I had only TV On The Radio material to compare it to, but even in the context of the album, “Magnetic” is Adebimpe at his most distilled—boiling rock, electronic, and post-punk into what I can only call a danceable panic attack. It’s feverish; it forcibly jars your nervous system into fight-or-flight with jaw-clenching, head-banging momentum.
That momentum continues through “Ate The Moon” and “Pinstack,” where distorted and grooving basslines ascend, tense, and collapse in tandem like crashing waves as Adebimpe calls out for preachers, doctors, and coroners to fight the quickly enveloping chaos around him. His lyrics present a stark contrast to the intro’s otherwise peaceful atmosphere as he surveys a world that’s feeling less symbolic and more literal by the week—protests, plane crashes, dystopian societal crumbling and all. Meanwhile, the beatboxing, boom-boom-clap rhythms of “Drop” do well to redirect the listener’s attention yet again, as if Adebimpe is taking pause to say, “In other news.” It’s the midpoint exhale, a breath before he descends further into introspection and, if I had to guess, a sly nod to the ever-spinning distraction machine that is modern media. The tonal pivot here feels deliberate, cynical even—another reminder that while Thee Black Boltz may be his solo debut, Adebimpe is no stranger to creative sequencing.
“ILY” follows as the lone acoustic ballad on Thee Black Boltz, a moment dedicated as a eulogy for his sister. Both the chords and vocal inflection are cloaked in western twang and noir. Tunde Adebimpe’s grief is plainspoken, the background vocals distant and ghostly as he attempts to find solace in the idea that she is still with him, and the refrain of “I love you,” while simple, stings in its bare, fragile honesty. “Let’s wait for the stars to shine / So maybe we can see it better/ And we could take the time / If only just for one more day / And we could glow bright, as the sky / When the sun hits the sea / And know I love you,” he sings on the chorus, trembling under the weight of what it means to remember a loved one through song.
In the wake of “ILY”, follow-up tracks “The Most” and “God Knows” feel strangely dissonant. They don’t shoulder the same emotional weight, and while their glossy, ‘80s call-back synths and Americana guitar licks certainly work out of context, their placement blunts the still largely lingering heartbreak. Thankfully, “Blue” corrects the course with a return to form: cinematic, layered, and drawn-out vocal lines, beating drum machines, and deep, warbling synths. If “Drop” marked the ledge of Adebimpe’s descent, this is the bottom of the pool—industrial, eerie, and hypnotically spellbinding.
The latter half of Thee Black Boltz plays like a grab bag of both genre and atmosphere, running back and forth between vibes and genres without ever settling into a consistent flow. “Somebody New” is a full-blown retro dreamscape, heavy on vocoded vocals, arpeggiated synths, and reverbed snares, but it comes across as simply a more complete, fleshed out version of the ideas from “God Knows.” And, as the record draws to a close with “Streetlight Nuevo,” Thee Black Boltz concludes with a petering fade out rather than the final flare it needs—an ellipsis rather than an exclamation mark. Still, the decision feels intentional, like an acknowledgment that this story isn’t finished, that the flame still flickers. Surely this won’t be the last we hear from Tunde Adebimpe.
