TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe: ‘I remember thinking I never want to do this again’

TV on the Radio’s frontman hit rock bottom at the height of the band’s powers and stopped performing music for good. But with his acting career taking off and a genre-jumping new solo album, one of rock’s great polymaths is back

Sitting in the belly of north London’s Islington Assembly Hall in the middle of four sold-out nights, TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe is recalling the precise moment he wanted to quit his band – and music – for ever. It was 2019 and the group, an art-rock four-piece who haven’t made a record that wasn’t adored by critics since emerging from Brooklyn in the early 00s, were opening for Weezer and Pixies at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Over the years, they’ve made five studio albums and also lost bass player Gerard Smith, who died suddenly in 2011. They’ve grieved and grown together. Adebimpe is their talisman. A tall, expressive focal point, able to rabble-rouse with songs such as Wolf Like Me, or calm the congregation with low-slung tracks such as DLZ or Young Liars.