Bloc Party‘s Kele Okereke has spoken out about the racist and homophobic comments he has been receiving online, saying that he doesn’t think that “being visible” means that he should be “subject to abuse”.
The indie frontman spoke about the hateful comments he had seen during a new interview with Miquita Oliver as part of the Miss Me? podcast.
In the episode, Okereke discussed the online promotion for Bloc Party’s latest album ‘Anatomy Of A Brief Romance’, and said that his team informed him of an extensive amount of hate comments they had noticed on a promo clip for their song ‘Pigwig’, taking aim at his race and sexuality.
“We put out a song called ‘Pigwig’, and I got a call from my management saying that there had been a viral [thing] and they were having to work overtime to delete lots of racist and homophobic comments,” he shared. “It was something I had never really experienced before.”
Okereke went on to share that while he has “known from the start that there will be people that do not want to see a brown face fronting an indie band”, he had never “felt that kind of kickback” until seeing the slew of comments on the ‘Pigwig’ clip.
He added that while he usually tries not to pay any mind to the online comments – believing firmly that “commentary fades, but the art remains” – he had noticed that being “intensely personal” in his lyrics for the latest album had opened him up to “a nastiness that I’ve never experienced before in all my years of doing this”.
“I’m fully aware that as a musician, people are entitled to not like what we do, I get that,” he added. “I don’t want to presume that I’m immune from criticism, but I don’t think me being visible means that I need to be subject to abuse. But that’s the world now…”
‘Pigwig’ dropped as the fourth single from the album, arriving after ‘Coming On Strong’, ‘Love Bombs’ and ‘Now We Can’t Be Friends’.
Sharing the song in August, the singer added that it was “about the moment of realising that you have been hit by a very big love, almost as if it’s against your will,” and “probably one of the sweetest [track] on the album”.
Okereke has been open about his experiences of racism in the past, and back in 2007 spoke to NME about how his cousin was killed in a racist attack, explaining that it led to “a lot of the anxieties I had as a young person”.
In 2019, the singer also explored “public racism” in his solo single ‘Jungle Bunny’, released as part of his ‘2042’ album. “As a person of colour living in the western world, it does not matter how much wealth one accumulates, race will follow you wherever you go,” he said of the song. “With ‘Jungle Bunny’ I wanted to explore this idea: In a time of such rampant division and public racism, what is the responsibility of the Black entertainer?”
He also spoke to NME about how the political landscape inspired the song and the album, saying that he had “never experienced such widespread public racism” before.
“The political backdrop that we’re experiencing right now is quite frightening to me,” he said. “Brexit has unleashed a wave of nativist patriotism and there’s been an unleashing of ugliness and a coarsening of the rhetoric. I’ve never experienced such widespread public racism and for it to be given the centre ground.
“This idea of a multi-cultural Britain, that there is now somehow resistance towards it, is something that I’ve never experienced in my life [until] now,” he continued. “And it’s not just the politicians and the media. It’s the artists too.”
Bloc Party are currently out on a co-headline UK and European tour with Interpol, which kicked off in Copenhagen last night (Tuesday November 10).
Both groups broke through in the ’00s, and will be treating crowds to material from across their 20-year-plus careers – including tracks from Bloc Party’s seminal debut ‘Silent Alarm’ (2005) and Interpol’s landmark second record ‘Antics’ (2004). They previously toured the UK together in 2004, and co-headlined a series of shows in Australia in 2023.
Last year, Bloc Party released a 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Silent Alarm’, and celebrated the record on tour – including at a huge 2024 show in London’s Crystal Palace Park. They also received the Outstanding Song Collection award at the Ivors 2025.
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