Hip-Hop Lives Here
Hip-Hop Lives Here
Tinie Tempah has opened up to NME about being committed to supporting the UK’s grassroots venues, and plans to drop what could be his first new album in nearly 10 years.
The London singer, rapper and producer caught up with us on the red carpet for the 2026 Ivor Novellos, where he is a member of the Ivors board and works to “continue to uplift and promote and protect songwriters” across the country.
Speaking about how the industry has changed since then, the rapper – real name Patrick Okogwu – explained how he and countless others owe their success to the grassroots venues across the country.
As a longtime supporter of the Music Venue Trust and their efforts to help protect grassroots gig spaces, Tempah has joined their bill for Everywhere At Once – a festival taking place at hundreds of vital venues across the UK next month.
“When I think about my time coming up, I think about the 10,000 hours that I put into going around the UK and performing in all the small venues from 100 capacity to 500 capacity,” Tinie said. “I think of all the times I got cheered, all the times I got booed, all the times there was no one there, or when there was one or two people in the crowd.
“I think it was really my rite of passage, because it helped me to build a core fan base, most of whom have stuck with me to this day,” he added. “Obviously we now have social media and you can cast your net out into the wider world, but there is something so important about being in front of people in real life.
“Think about all the scenes that the UK has been able to bring to the forefront over the years – they typically start underground and they typically start in places and spaces like that. So if we lose these spaces, I worry for the next generation of artists.”
He continued: “On top of that, live music is where a lot of musicians make the lion’s share of their income, so if we don’t have these venues to perform in, we’re screwed. Considering how much UK music has impacted around the world, it’s almost our duty as the British population to preserve some of these venues and spaces. Some of them should be institutions.”
Despite years of hard gigging, he has not released any new music since 2020, when he dropped the single ‘Top Winners. His last album was 2017’s ‘Youth’.
Speaking to NME at the Ivors, the ‘Written In The Stars’ singer revealed that he has finally completed work on new music with a renewed and sharpened focus.
“I took a long hiatus and I just went to figure out my life. But I’m definitely back now,” he shared. “There’s a lot of new music coming your way. I’m going to drop the project in September, so I’m super excited for people to hear that and take it in.”
“A lot of it is inspired by what I was just talking about: nightlife culture,” he continued, adding that it will be an album that takes listeners “on a journey through the night from the start – when you even have the idea of wanting to go out – all the way to the messy 4am that we all know and we’ve all experienced.”
“I’m super excited for people to hear it. I’ve worked super hard on it. I’m super proud of it as well.”
More details about the new release are expected to be shared soon, with Tinie Tempah playing at intimate venues across Newcastle, Norwich and Southampton as part of the Everywhere At Once festival next month.
Others on the bill include Becky Hill and The Lathums, and the festival is being spearheaded by Music Venue Trust, The National Lottery, Save Our Scene, and Association of Independent Promoters. Audiences will be given the opportunity to help support various music charities too, with donations distributed to War Child, Nordoff and Robbins, Help Musicians UK and Teenage Cancer Trust. Find remaining tickets and more information here.
The news of the festival’s launch arrived at a vital time for the UK’s live music sector, as reports show that 30 grassroots venues were lost forever between July 2024 and July 2025 – and last year alone saw more than half of those remaining making no profit, with over 6,000 jobs lost.
There is currently an ongoing push for a ticket levy to be introduced, which would see smaller venues and rising talent across the country receive a contribution from arena and stadium gigs to ensure their survival. The pressure is now on for the live music industry to ensure that 50 per cent of these shows are voluntarily paying in by June 2026, or else the government will step in to make it mandatory by law.
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It’s 10am in California and Green Day drummer Tré Cool is making his coffee and about to drill down with NME into Nimrods, the new feature film comedy inspired by the band. “One second,” he says. “Sorry, there’s a fight on the street here. You know, it’s America. They’re always fighting in the streets.” His interest is piqued by an altercation outside his window. “Oh, that guy just hit the other guy in the face. Oh, now Grandma just got involved… slamming with her purse. Oh boy, you never know what you’re gonna get.”
It’s the sort of everyday roughhousing you might find in Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy, to give it its full title. Don’t expect a typical biopic here – one that might show the band forged in the late-’80s Bay Area punk scene, releasing debut album ‘Dookie’ in 1994 – or, for that matter, winning five Grammys and selling a staggering 75million records. Rather, Nimrods comes inspired by the early, scrappy adventures of Cool, bassist Mike Dirnt and lead guitarist/vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong.
From an idea originally formulated by Armstrong, Nimrods is a wild coming-of-age road movie, as a trio of teenagers – Tommy (Mason Thames), Fred (Kylr Coffman) and Chad (Ryan Foust) – are pranked into heading to LA under the belief that their band Analog Dogs is about to open for Green Day. Cool and his bandmates fed director Lee Kirk anecdotes from their pre-‘Dookie’ days. “It’s not a mirror image but is it is definitely a fuzzy reflection of us,” says Cool. “We’re a part of these kids, and they’re a part of us.”
With the band even cameoing (at an in-store that Tommy and co. crash), it’s really a love letter to their legions of fans. “I mean, we love them, and I guess it is a special relationship we have with them,” says Cool, 53. “I’ve been to shows and seen other bands’ fans and it’s not that our fans are crazier or better looking… which they are, very much so! But they’re so cross generational. There’s different age groups of fans. We’re their band and it’s a part of a culture of misfits that belong together.”
“A lot of them were cooked into the script. Like the severed head… that actually happened. We stayed at this guy’s house, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, I want you to meet my friend Sleepy.’ We’re in Copenhagen. And he pulls his frickin’ human head in a jar out of his closet. He’s like, ‘You can’t tell anyone I have this!’ And we’re like, ‘Holy fuck!’ And then he set it down, and we were all sleeping on the floor next to this head. It was pretty scary.”
“Yeah, I would say. I mean, that’s what people would say about us. We were just us. There was no barometer because we were just this traveling pack of banshees that just behaved in our way, and we just did our thing, and we didn’t realise that other people weren’t like us, I guess. We were just all batshit crazy, and we gravitated to other people that were similar, other bands and creatives and stuff. So it becomes a scene at that point. I guess you call it wild in comparison to some other people.”
“We stayed away from that. We let Lee and company handle that because… he’s writing the movie. He should know what the right mood is – and he sure did. And it was a surprise to us when we first saw the screening when the songs came on. There’s a demo version of ‘In the End’… it’s from an old, unreleased demo. And then ‘Haushinka’ being played… that’s awesome. Hearing that song in like a Dolby 7.1 sound system in a theatre, it’s pretty amazing.”
“Yeah. It happens every so often. Every couple of eras, someone’s like: ‘We should make a film about your life.’ Like, we ain’t done yet. We don’t want to sit and look back and spin our wheels, spending our energy talking about what we’ve done when we’re still doing stuff.”
“Absolutely. It’s a relevant movie, and we feel like we’re a very relevant band – and, like I said, we’re not done by any means. So, a biopic story is more of a retirement plan. We’ll do that when we’re actually old and we’re doing our residencies in Las Vegas or something… that’s probably a good time to do it.”
“I’m not going to tell you that!”
“I think it’s probably more talk now that Nimrods is such a hit. It’s great. We’ve shown that we can make records – and apparently we can make movies too. So, let’s do it. We make musicals. We can make ‘Dookie’… every morning!”
“Yeah, just got to do the right [thing]. Come on, we just put out Nimrods! You’re trying to make us make another movie! That’s like as soon as you put a new record out, two weeks later… ‘Oh, you guys gonna go back in the studio?’ Well, look, I’ll tell you this: we’re very proud of ‘American Idiot’, and it’s an incredibly important record to us – and we’re not not talking about it!”
“Yeah. If they ask us. It’s the last great festival that we haven’t done.”
“I just go with what’s on the day sheet! They’re not really calling the drummer!”
‘Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy’ is in UK cinemas now
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