Kae Tempest

Last updated

Kae Tempest
Kate Tempest - Haldern Pop Festival 2017-6.jpg
Tempest at Haldern Pop Festival in 2017
Born1985 (age 3839) [1]
Westminster, London, England
Other namesExcentral Tempest [2]
Occupation(s)Poet, playwright, rapper, recording artist
Notable workHopelessly Devoted, Wasted, Brand New Ancients, Everybody Down ,Hold Your Own, The Bricks That Built The Houses, Let Them Eat Chaos
Musical career
Genres Spoken word, hip-hop
Instrument(s)Vocals
Labels American Recordings, Fiction, Big Dada, Ninja Tune, Lex
Website www.kaetempest.co.uk OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Kae Tempest [3] [4] (formerly Kate Tempest) [5] [6] is an English spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist and playwright.

Contents

At the age of 16, Tempest was accepted into the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon. In 2013, they won the Ted Hughes Award for their work Brand New Ancients. [7] They were named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society, [8] a once-a-decade accolade. Tempest's albums Everybody Down [7] and Let Them Eat Chaos have been nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. [9] The latter's accompanying poetry book (also titled Let Them Eat Chaos) was nominated for the Costa Book of the Year in the Poetry Category. [10] [11] Their debut novel The Bricks That Built the Houses was a Sunday Times best-seller and won the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Breakthrough Author. They were nominated as Best Female Solo Performer at the 2018 Brit Awards. [12] Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020, using pronouns they/them. [13]

Personal life

Tempest performing at Way Out West 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden Kate Tempest Way Out West 2015 (20379617120).jpg
Tempest performing at Way Out West 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden

Kae Tempest grew up in Brockley, South East London, [5] [6] one of five children whose father was a corporate media lawyer, and their mother a teacher. Tempest worked in a record shop from age 14 to 18. They went to Thomas Tallis School, leaving at 16 to study at the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, going on to graduate in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London. [7] [9] Tempest first performed at 16, at open mic nights at Deal Real, a small hip-hop store in Carnaby Street in London's West End. They went on to support acts such as John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg and Benjamin Zephaniah. Tempest toured internationally with their band Sound of Rum until the band disbanded in 2012 before being commissioned to write their first play, Wasted. [14]

In August 2020, Tempest came out as non-binary, began using they/them pronouns, and changed their name to Kae. [15]

Tempest performs hip hop, namely their signature piece Let Them Eat Chaos, at the 2017 Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho KateTempestTreefort2017.jpg
Tempest performs hip hop, namely their signature piece Let Them Eat Chaos , at the 2017 Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho

Career

In 2013, Tempest released their first poetry book Everything Speaks in its Own Way, a limited edition run on their own imprint, Zingaro. At 26, they launched the theatrical spoken word piece Brand New Ancients at the Battersea Arts Centre (2012), to great critical acclaim. [11] [12] [14] [16] The piece also won Tempest the Herald Angel and The Ted Hughes Prize. Some of Tempest's influences include Christopher Logue (their "favourite poet"), [17] [18] Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, W B Yeats, William Blake, W H Auden and Wu-Tang Clan. [12] [14] [19]

In September 2013, their play Hopelessly Devoted was produced by Paines Plough and premiered at Birmingham Rep Theatre. [20]

In 2014, they released the album Everybody Down (Big Dada, Ninja Tune), which was produced by Dan Carey and was nominated for the 2014 Mercury Prize. [21]

Since the release of Everybody Down, Tempest has increased touring as a musician, [22] playing at festivals and headlining shows with their live band which consists of Kwake Bass on drums, [23] Dan Carey on synths and Clare Uchima on keyboards. [24]

In October 2014, their first poetry collection for Picador, Hold Your Own, was published. The collection was a commercial and critical success and its release coincided with Tempest being named a Next Generation Poet.

Tempest was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2015. [25]

In April 2016, their debut novel The Bricks That Built The Houses was published by Bloomsbury and was a Sunday Times Bestseller. It won the Books Are My Bag Best Breakthrough Author Award. [16]

In September 2016, it was announced that Tempest would curate the 2017 Brighton Festival. They released the album Let Them Eat Chaos on 7 October 2016. [26] It debuted at no. 28 on the UK Albums Chart, and was also released in book format (Picador). [27] The album was also nominated for the Mercury Prize, this time in 2017. [28] They were nominated for Best British Female Solo Performer at the 2018 Brit Awards. [12]

Tempest's song "People's Faces" was used for the Facebook commercial "We're Never Lost If We Can Find Each Other", created by the agency Droga5, and released on 9 April 2020. [29]

Paradise, Tempest's modern adaptation of Sophocles' Greek Classic, Philoctetes , premiered at the National Theatre from 4 August - 11 September 2021. The all-female cast, featuring Lesley Sharp, was directed by Ian Rickson and performed in the Olivier Theatre. [30]

Politics

In November 2019, along with other public figures, Tempest signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 UK general election. [31] In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, they signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few." [32] [33]

Reception

The Economist said of Tempest's commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company: "A stunning piece by [Kae] Tempest, a London-born performance poet, comes bursting off the screen. Rarely has the relevance of Shakespeare to our language, to the very fabric of our feelings, been expressed with quite such youthful passion. (It should be mandatory viewing for all teenagers.)" [34] The Huffington Post describes them as "Britain's leading young poet, playwright and rapper...one of the most widely respected performers in the country – the complete package of lyrics and delivery. [They are] also one of the most exciting young writers working in Britain today" (2012). The Guardian commented of Brand New Ancients, "Suddenly it feels as if we are not in a theatre but a church... gathered around a hearth, hearing the age-old stories that help us make sense of our lives. We're given the sense that what we are watching is something sacred." [35] In 2013, the newspaper noted:

[They are] one of the brightest talents around. [Their] spoken-word performances have the metre and craft of traditional poetry, the kinetic agitation of hip-hop and the intimacy of a whispered heart-to-heart... Tempest deals bravely with poverty, class and consumerism. [They do] so in a way that not only avoids the pitfalls of sounding trite, but manages to be beautiful too, drawing on ancient mythology and sermonic cadence to tell stories of the everyday. [36]

In 2013, aged 28, they won the Ted Hughes Award for their work Brand New Ancients, the first person under the age of 40 to win the award, [37] and was selected as one of the 2014 Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Society. [38]

Tempest has received wide critical acclaim for their written and live work. [34] A performance of Brand New Ancients prompted the New York Times to say "As gorgeous streams of words flow out, [they conjure] a story so vivid it’s as if you had a state-of-the-art Blu-ray player stuffed into your brain, projecting image after image that sears itself into your consciousness" [19] while a review by Michiko Kakutani of their poetry collections in the same paper explored their written style: “While [their] intense performances on stage add a fierce urgency to the words, these text versions of [their] work stand powerfully on their own on the page...using [their] pictorial imagination to sear specific images into the reader's mind". [21]

They have been published in nine languages.

Everybody Down was nominated for the 2015 Mercury Music Prize and Let Them Eat Chaos have been nominated for the 2017 Mercury Music Prize. Their accompanying poetry book Let Them Eat Chaos was nominated for the Costa Book of the Year in the Poetry Category in 2016. They were nominated as Best Female Solo Performer at the 2018 Brit Awards.

Publications

Poetry collections

Spoken word performance

Tempest at Primavera Sound 2019 Kate Tempest, Ray-Ban stage 4.jpg
Tempest at Primavera Sound 2019

Plays

Novel

Non-fiction book

Discography

Studio albums

Singles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lex Records</span> British record label

Lex Records is a British independent record label. Most releases on the label are alternative hip hop, alternative rock or electronic music. Dazed described Lex as a label "...whose wildly creative output spans over a decade of landmark releases that have changed the music industry no end."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesca Martinez</span> British comedian (born 1978)

Francesca Martinez is an English comedian, writer and actress. She has cerebral palsy, but prefers to describe herself as "wobbly". Martinez first came to public attention in 1994, when she made her debut on the television series Grange Hill, where she went on to portray the role of Rachel Burns for a total of 55 episodes. Later turning her focus to stand-up comedy, she has performed at the Edinburgh Festival and internationally, including the Melbourne Comedy Festival, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, the Perth Festival and the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. In 2018 she completed a 140-date tour, and has had off-West End London runs at the Tricycle Theatre, the Hackney Empire, and the Soho Theatre. Martinez's debut play, All of Us, was scheduled to be performed at the National Theatre in 2020, but it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It opened in July 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big Dada</span> Record label

Big Dada is a British independent record label imprint distributed by Ninja Tune. It was started by reputed hip hop journalist Will Ashon in 1997. It is best known for marketing of prominent British hip hop artist Roots Manuva, poet and playwright Kae Tempest, grime pioneer Wiley, rapper and designer DELS and Mercury Prize winners Speech Debelle and Young Fathers.

Picador is an imprint of Pan Macmillan in the United Kingdom and Australia and of Macmillan Publishing in the United States. Both companies are owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Rosen</span> British childrens author and poet (born 1946)

Michael Wayne Rosen is a British children's author, poet, presenter, political columnist, broadcaster, activist, and academic, who has written over 200 books for children and adults. He served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. He won the 2023 PEN Pinter Prize, awarded by English PEN, for his "fearless" body of work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kano (British musician)</span> British rapper

Kane Brett Robinson, better known as Kano, is a British rapper, songwriter and actor from East Ham, London. A significant contributor to grime music, he is widely considered one of the pioneers of the grime culture, alongside artists such as Wiley and Dizzee Rascal. His fifth album, Made in the Manor was shortlisted for the 2016 Mercury Prize and won Best Album at the 2016 MOBO Awards. On screen, he is best known for playing the role of Sully in Top Boy.

Daniel De Mussenden Carey is an English record producer, songwriter, mixer and remixer. He owns his own studio in South London and runs the record label Speedy Wunderground.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Anaxagorou</span> British born poet and writer

Anthony Anaxagorou is a British-born Cypriot poet, writer, publisher and educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Omar Musa</span> Musical artist

Omar bin Musa is a Malaysian-Australian author, poet, rapper and visual artist from Queanbeyan, New South Wales.

The Ted Hughes Award was an annual literary prize given to a living UK poet for new work in poetry. It was awarded each spring in recognition of a work from the previous year. It was a project which ran alongside Carol Ann Duffy's tenure as Poet Laureate, which ended when Duffy finished her 10 years as Poet Laureate in 2019

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wioletta Grzegorzewska</span> Polish poet and writer

Wioletta Grzegorzewska, or Wioletta Greg (1974) is a Polish poet and writer nominated for The Man Booker Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sabrina Mahfouz</span> British Egyptian poet, playwright, performer and writer

Sabrina Mahfouz is a British-Egyptian poet, playwright, performer and writer from South London, England. Her published work includes poetry, plays and contributions to several anthologies her brother is mohamed Salah.

<i>Everybody Down</i> 2014 studio album by Kae Tempest

Everybody Down is the debut album by English poet and spoken word artist Kae Tempest, which was nominated for the 2014 Mercury Prize. Its tracks comprise a unified story cycle with a coherent narrative arc, based upon a main character named Becky.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Loyle Carner</span> English hip hop musician (born 1994)

Benjamin Gerard Coyle-Larner, known professionally as Loyle Carner, is an English hip hop musician. After supporting various rappers during their tours, he released his debut album, Yesterday's Gone, in 2017, which garnered a nomination for the 2017 Mercury Prize. He released his second album, Not Waving, but Drowning, in April 2019, and his third, hugo, in October 2022. Carner has been nominated for three Brit Awards.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

<i>Let Them Eat Chaos</i> Album by Kae Tempest

Let Them Eat Chaos is the second studio album by English poet and spoken word artist Kae Tempest, the follow-up to their Mercury Prize-nominated debut Everybody Down. The album follows seven individuals who all live on the same street who have never met each other before. But then at 4:18 in the morning, a storm causes these seven people to leave their homes and see each other for the very first time.

Joelle Taylor RSL is a poet, playwright and author. She settled in London after hitchhiking there from Lancashire, where she was brought up.

Rebecca Watts is a British poet. Her first collection of poetry, The Met Office Advises Caution, was published by Carcanet Press in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry's First Collection Poetry Prize in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond Antrobus</span> British poet

Raymond Antrobus is a British poet, educator and writer, who has been performing poetry since 2007. In March 2019, he won the Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry. In May 2019, Antrobus became the first poet to win the Rathbones Folio Prize for his collection The Perseverance, praised by chair of the judges as "an immensely moving book of poetry which uses his deaf experience, bereavement and Jamaican-British heritage to consider the ways we all communicate with each other." Antrobus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2016 Nobel Prize in Literature</span> Award

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". The prize was announced by the Swedish Academy on 13 October 2016. He is the 12th Nobel laureate from the United States.

References

  1. Tempest, Kae (2020). On Connection. London: Faber & Faber. Bio inside back cover. They were born in London in 1985 where they still live.
  2. "Phrased & Confused". The Hub. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
  3. Murray, Robin (6 August 2020). "Kate Tempest Changes Name To Kae Tempest". Clash . Retrieved 7 August 2020.
  4. Kae Tempest [@kaetempest] (6 August 2020). "kae tempest on Twitter" (Tweet). Retrieved 7 August 2020 via Twitter.
  5. 1 2 Hogan, Michael (14 September 2014). "Kate Tempest: a winning wielder of words". The Guardian . Retrieved 7 September 2022.
  6. 1 2 Donadio, Rachel (6 March 2015). "Kate Tempest, a British Triple Threat, Crosses the Pond". New York Times . Retrieved 7 September 2022.
  7. 1 2 3 "'Mercury nominees 2014: Kate Tempest". Guardian Music Blog. London. 22 October 2014. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  8. Flood, Alison (11 September 2014). "'Next Generation' of 20 hotly-tipped poets announced by Poetry Book Society". The Guardian . London. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  9. 1 2 "Kate Tempest – 'Let Them Eat Chaos'". mercuryprize.com. Mercury Prize. 2 August 2017. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  10. "Costa shortlists" (PDF).
  11. 1 2 Cain, Sian (22 November 2016). "Costa book award 2016 shortlists dominated by female writers". The Guardian . London. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  12. 1 2 3 4 "British Female Solo Artist Nominees Announced". Brit Awards. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  13. Beaumont-Thomas, Ben (6 August 2020). "Kate Tempest announces they are non-binary, changes name to Kae". The Guardian .
  14. 1 2 3 Mahoney, Elisabeth (27 March 2012). "Wasted – review". The Guardian . Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  15. Beaumont-Thomas, Ben (6 August 2020). "Kate Tempest announces they are non-binary, changes name to Kae". The Guardian . Retrieved 7 August 2020.
  16. 1 2 "Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2017 sponsored by National Book Tokens". National Book Tokens. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  17. Kae Tempest [@kaetempest] (29 January 2013). "Christopher Logue is my favourite poet" (Tweet). Retrieved 17 February 2023 via Twitter.
  18. "Kate Tempest webchat – your questions answered on Jung, dog chat, and why poetry speaks to us all". the Guardian. 14 December 2016. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  19. 1 2 Isherwood, Charles (14 January 2014). "'Brand New Ancients' Stars Kate Tempest in a Tragic Tale – The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  20. Brennan, Clare (23 September 2013). "Hopelessly Devoted – review – Stage – The Guardian". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  21. 1 2 Kakutani, Michiko (18 March 2015). "Review – Kate Tempest, a Young Poet Conjuring Ancient Gods – The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
  22. Farand, Chloe (23 June 2017). "Kate Tempest 'moves people to tears' with powerful Glastonbury set". The Independent. Retrieved 12 November 2018.
  23. Tripney, Natasha (4 May 2017). "Kate Tempest: 'Everything is defined in monetary terms'". The Stage. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  24. "Let Them Eat Chaos Kate Tempest06.10. Tempelhof Hangar 5". volksbuehne.berlin. Retrieved 19 June 2018.[ permanent dead link ]
  25. "Kate Tempest". The Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  26. Clark, Alex (9 October 2016). "Kate Tempest: Let Them Eat Chaos review – a state-of-the-world address". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  27. "2017:The Year of the Wolf". Press Reader. 19 October 2016.
  28. Alexis Petridis (27 July 2017). "2017 Mercury shortlist fails to spotlight truly exciting British music". The Guardian.
  29. "Facebook TV Commercial, 'We're Never Lost If We Can Find Each Other' Song by Kate Tempest". iSpot.tv. Retrieved 9 April 2020.
  30. "Paradise". National Theatre. 10 February 2020. Retrieved 25 September 2022.
  31. Neale, Matthew (16 November 2019). "Exclusive: New letter supporting Jeremy Corbyn signed by Roger Waters, Robert Del Naja and more". NME . Retrieved 27 November 2019.
  32. "Vote for hope and a decent future". The Guardian . 3 December 2019. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  33. Proctor, Kate (3 December 2019). "Coogan and Klein lead cultural figures backing Corbyn and Labour". The Guardian . Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  34. 1 2 "William Shakespeare: A digital reinvention". The Economist . 28 August 2012. Retrieved 15 September 2012.
  35. Gardner, Lyn (10 September 2012). "Brand New Ancients – review BAC, London". The Guardian . Retrieved 15 September 2012.
  36. "Kate Tempest: the performance poet who can't be ignored" 10 April 2013, The Guardian .
  37. Michael Hogan (14 September 2014). "Kate Tempest: a winning wielder of words". The Guardian.
  38. Alison Flood (11 September 2014). "'Next Generation' of 20 hotly-tipped poets announced by Poetry Book Society". The Guardian.
  39. "Kate Tempest shortlisted for Mercury Prize 2017". Panmacmillan.com. Archived from the original on 3 August 2017. Retrieved 3 August 2017.
  40. Geraghty, Hollie (20 January 2023). "Fraser T Smith shares new single 'We Were We Still Are' with Kae Tempest". Rolling Stone . Archived from the original on 20 January 2023. Retrieved 21 January 2023.