“Art Can’t Handle Me”: MC Grindah on How Kurupt FM Terrorised the Tate Britain with a Full on Rave Last Week

Last week, Brentford garage collective and stars of BBC comedy People Just Do Nothing, Kurupt FM, were booked by London art gallery Tate Britain to do a special live radio broadcast from the basement. The idea was that it would then be streamed via video into the main room, as visitors wandered the gallery, checking out installations by artists like Rafia Santana, grime portraits whizz kid Reuben Dangoor and many more. As the story goes, the crowd got a little restless that the Kurupt crew were just on screen and not in person, and hearing all this, Grindah and co decided to ditch the basement and come into the main room, kickstarting an impromptu rave which ended up going, well, totally crazy. There were people lighting up, mosh pits, reloads – the lot. It’s best summed up by this video:

TATE BRITAIN GOT SHUTDOWN LAST NIGHT! FAKIN MADNESS

Videos by VICE

People Just Do Nothing – Kurupt FM


Anyway, we spoke to MC Grindah earlier today to get the full story on what went down:

“Basically, we were doing this thing where we were doing Kurupt FM live at the Tate in the basement. We wanted to let some of the other London people hear Kurupt FM cos usually we’re just going out to Brentford, yeah? So we did it out of the basement with a video stream going out to the main room where all the thousands of ravers who’d come to see man were. Because they thought we weren’t actually going to come out, they were all going nuts. Literally streaming tears out of their eyes, screaming “WHERE ARE THEY!? WHERE ARE THEY!?” So man had to drop the mic, run out the basement into the main room and just drop “Get Out The Way” and turn it into a rave. People were blazing in there, it was a riot. Security were having a mare. I don’t think they liked us much to be honest.

Thing is, it ain’t about what’s supposed to happen, it’s about what I need to do for my people. Know what I mean? We were meant to just do the streamed broadcast and then come out and do a Q&A – which means question and answer, it’s an industry term, mate. Anyway, they weren’t having it. The fans just wanted to see man in the flesh. So we went out there and it went off. We shut the place down, and then fucking ducked out. It was light work for us.

We were told to stop, but it was hard cos I just wanted to carry on so we a least dropped our two classics so the people got what they wanted. After that I stopped the riddim, squinted into the distance and dropped the mic and walked off the stage. They fakin loved it to be fair. Only thing is I think we’re probably banned from the Tate now. Big up them lot though – sick range arena! Turns out art can’t handle man like Grindah.”

The Kurupt crew play Bugged Out Weekender in 2016.