Tunde Adebimpe
Babatunde Omoroga Adebimpe (ⓘ; born February 25, 1975) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, actor, director,[1] and visual artist best known as the lead singer of the Brooklyn-based band TV on the Radio.
Tunde Adebimpe
Babatunde Omoroga Adebimpe
February 25, 1975
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
- Singer-songwriter
- actor
- director
- animator
- visual artist
1998–present
Early life[edit]
Adebimpe was born into a Nigerian immigrant family in the United States. Babatunde is a Yoruba name that means "father has returned". He attended Shady Side Academy in Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania for high school, where he is still active on the board. His deceased father was a psychiatrist in Pittsburgh. He is married to French cartoonist Domitille Collardey, with whom he has a son.[2]
Film and television career[edit]
In 1998, Adebimpe worked as one of the initial animators of MTV's hyper-violent claymation program Celebrity Deathmatch.
He starred in a 2001 indie movie, Jump Tomorrow,[3] based on a short college film, Jorge, in which he played the same character.
In 2003, Adebimpe directed the music video for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song "Pin".[3]
In 2008, he appeared as the groom in Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married alongside Rosemarie DeWitt, who portrayed his character's bride, and Anne Hathaway, who portrayed the bride's wayward sister. In the film, Adebimpe performs an a cappella cover of the Neil Young song "Unknown Legend".[4]
In 2011, Adebimpe directed the visual companion to the band's fourth album, Nine Types of Light. For the film, he recruited a roster of the band's favorite filmmakers to helm individual clips that would be sewn together into an abstract narrative about dreams, love, fame and the future. Adebimpe directed the video for the song "Forgotten", as well as the interstitial clips where a chorus of narrators help try to connect the dots between the film's various segments.[5]
In 2013, Adebimpe directed and animated the video for Higgins Waterproof Black Magic Band's single "The Blast the Bloom",[6][7] In late 2013, Adebimpe wrapped shooting on Chilean director Sebastian Silva's Nasty Baby, starring opposite Kristen Wiig and director Silva. The film was released in 2015.[8]
Adebimpe made a brief cameo as himself on the IFC program Portlandia in the show's season 4 premiere.
In 2016, he provided the voice for the character Banana Guard #16 in the Adventure Time episode "The Thin Yellow Line".
In 2017, he starred in the second season of The Girlfriend Experience.
Adebimpe portrayed Mr. Cobbwell in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017).
In 2020, in the second episode of the HBO Perry Mason miniseries, Adebimpe has a small role as a street preacher.[9]
Visual art[edit]
Originally a cartoonist, Adebimpe still maintains a design, drawing and painting practice. In addition to art directing all of TV on the Radio's album covers, he painted the cover for the band's 2013 single "Mercy".
In 2009, Adebimpe released a self-published art comic, Plague Hero. The painted book depicts a boxing match between two anthropomorphic characters. Randomly selected copies contained a DVD of "Mystery Sh*t", a compilation of song sketches and animations from Adebimpe's archives.[17]
In May 2017, Adebimpe premiered A Warm Weather Ghost, a live, multimedia performance work commissioned by the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis.[18]