Tuka

Tuka helped establish the Australian hip-hop group Thundamentals and has also built a thriving career on his own. Atmosphere’s wide-ranging, self-revealing style of hip-hop left a deep mark on him, yet his work further draws from dub reggae, chillwave textures, and the contemporary R&B approach of artists such as Frank Ocean, all shaped by his reflective narrative approach. Brendan Tuckerman came into the world in 1985 in New South Wales’ Blue Mountains, where he first performed with Rumpunch and Sketch the Rhyme; in 2008 he joined others to launch Thundamentals, then operating under the name Connect 4. After issuing an EP that bore the band’s name, the collective delivered its first album, Sleeping on Your Style, through Obese Records in 2009. Tuka’s initial solo project, Will Rap for Tuka, appeared on Big Village in 2010 and included input from several Thundamentals colleagues while he continued working within the group. His next solo album, Feedback Loop, surfaced two years later. Thundamentals had reached star status by the arrival of their third album, So We Can Remember, in 2014; it entered the Australian album chart at number three and generated multiple radio successes. Tuka moved to EMI for his solo output, and the wide-ranging Life Death Time Eternal reached the Top Ten in 2015. After completing an Australian tour behind the record and making his initial appearances in the United States, he issued the Alive Death Time Eternal EP in 2016. Thundamentals returned with their fourth album, Everyone We Know, in 2017, landing at number two on the Australian charts.