TV on the radio

Thrasher Magazine, July, 2004 by Guy Gray

THE PRESS may lazily lump TV on the Radio into the hip Williamsburg music clique, but their ideas and music are leagues apart from the $150 jeans scene. TV on the Radio is gospel music for the 21st century church of despair. Their ominous tones accurately reflect the increasing amount of entropy in the world, while their lyrics depict the struggle to make sense of it all. Singer Tunde Adebimpe breaks it down for us.

I have read that the EP ("Young Liars") was a response to September 11th and the feelings it generated. What, if anything, is the LP a response to?

As far as that stuff goes, I would say that there are some songs on the LP (Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes) that are naturally about the aftermath of that. And I feel like it's a cheap thing to be like, "Okay great, this is my tragedy by proxy," even though I wasn't really that attached or even knew anyone involved. I would hate for anyone to think: Wow, this terrible thing happened and now everyone is going to he able to profit off the misery of it. It's not that at all; it's very, very basic. It occupies a lot of your head space, though.

I hear that, but a whole lot of people don't live in New York and have no idea what it was like to go through such a terrible event.

Totally, but believe me, there's nothing I would like better than to never have to think about that ever again. You go across the bridge and the city is still missing its front teeth. It's so weird that that shit is gone. That stuff has been there since I was alive. It's weird. What's even weirder is ... even up 'til yesterday, Dave was telling me about the president's press conference where every journalist in the room was nailing him against the wall about his military service record.

There have been rumors about that for years and now the press is just getting onto him about it.

Exactly, now they're getting onto him about it. That's what I'm saying. It's this weird process; you hear about things months before anyone is held accountable for them. Years before, even. Being in NY for the past two years it's been a weird thing to just glance al the cover of a newspaper and have no interest in picking it up, because you know it's propaganda. Like the daily news in the New York Post--you walk past those things like they're the worst kind of comic book. I can't pick that up and expect to get anything honest out of it. For me, it's a weird place to be in.

The album seems really personal, but even being that, there is still a political aspect.

Yeah, there are elements of it. Walking around this town you still feel that stuff; you know that things have changed in varying degrees for various people. Kyp was coming back from seeing his daughter in New Jersey and the bus driver stopped at the airport and asked two policemen to get on the bus and question him, because they thought he was a terrorist. He came to practice and he was furious! The bus driver wasted everyone's time by doing this and tried to apologize to him, but Kyp just told him to do his job and get everyone into New York.

It's media influence needlessly freaking everyone out.

Yeah, we're living in a really weird time. I was talking to one of my friends about the whole Janet Jackson thing ...

"Wardrobe malfunction."

Yeah. Who got paid to write that? I wish I was that guy; he's on an island somewhere sipping milk from a coconut. But seriously, all it took was one naked breast to reveal so much about what kind of country we're living in now. First off, it was this huge deal. Second, it was apparently the most TiVo'd moment. And thirdly, all these TiVo users flipped out because they realized that there is some massive database that knows what you're watching and when.

Talk about your art and your music as a response to all that mainstream crap.

Everything is getting really surreal. If the world is going to be that sincere with its stupidity, then my only response as someone who makes art is to be as equally sincere with nay feelings about how stupid I think something is. Everything is becoming such a weird and surreal collage that all you have to do is document it with a little distance and you've got something interesting.

What do you want people to get from your music?

I know that every song, both lyrically and musically, is trying to evoke a feeling. No matter how odd things get, if you can make something out of it then you're probably all right. You can take solace in the fact that other people are just as confused and weirded out.