Tempest performing at Way Out West 2015 in Gothenburg, Sweden
Kae Tempest grew up in Brockley, South East London,[4][5] as one of five children, with a father who was a corporate media lawyer, and a mother who was a teacher. Tempest worked in a record shop from age 14 to 18. He went to Thomas Tallis School, leaving at 16 to study at the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon. He went on to graduate in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London.[6][8] 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. He 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.[citation needed]
In August 2020, Tempest came out as non-binary, using they/them pronouns, and changed his name to Kae.[14] In a 2023 BBC documentary, Tempest documented his experiences having top surgery and beginning to take testosterone, and also opened up about his mental health struggles as a touring musician.[15][16] In 2025, Tempest came out as a trans man and began using he/him pronouns.[13][17]
Tempest wrote his first play, Wasted, in 2012.[18]In September 2013, his play Hopelessly Devoted was produced by Paines Plough and premiered at Birmingham Rep Theatre.[23]
Since the release of Everybody Down, Tempest has increased touring as a musician,[25] playing at festivals and headlining shows with his live band which consists of Kwake Bass on drums,[26] Dan Carey on synths and Clare Uchima on keyboards.[27]
In October 2014, Tempest published his first poetry collection for Picador, Hold Your Own. 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.[28]
In April 2016, his 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.[19]
In September 2016, it was announced that Tempest would curate the 2017 Brighton Festival. Tempest released the album Let Them Eat Chaos on 7 October 2016.[29] It debuted at no. 28 on the UK Albums Chart, and was also released in book format (Picador).[30] The album was also nominated for the Mercury Prize, this time in 2017.[31] Tempest was nominated for Best British Female Solo Performer at the 2018 Brit Awards.[11]
His 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.[32]
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.[33]
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.[34] In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he 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."[35][36]
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.)"[37] The Huffington Post describes him 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. [He is] 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."[38] In 2013, the newspaper noted:
[He is] one of the brightest talents around. [His] 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. [He does] 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.[39]
In 2013, aged 28, he won the Ted Hughes Award for his work Brand New Ancients, the first person under the age of 40 to win the award,[40] and was selected as one of the 2014 Next Generation Poets by the Poetry Society.[41]
Tempest has received wide critical acclaim for his written and live work.[37] A performance of Brand New Ancients prompted the New York Times to say "As gorgeous streams of words flow out, [he conjures] 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"[22] while a review by Michiko Kakutani of his poetry collections in the same paper explored their written style: “While [his] intense performances on stage add a fierce urgency to the words, these text versions of [his] work stand powerfully on their own on the page...using [his] pictorial imagination to sear specific images into the reader's mind".[24]
He has 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. His accompanying poetry book Let Them Eat Chaos was nominated for the Costa Book of the Year in the Poetry Category in 2016. At the 2018 Brit Awards, he was nominated as Best Female Solo Performer.
Publications
Poetry collections
2012: Everything Speaks in its Own Way
2013: Brand New Ancients
2014: Hold Your Own
2016: Let Them Eat Chaos
2016: Pictures on a Screen
2018: Running Upon The Wires
2023: Divisible By Itself and One
Spoken word performance
2012: Brand New Ancients – Ted Hughes Award 2013 (2014 released as CD)
Tempest at Primavera Sound 2019
Plays
2013: Wasted
2014: Glasshouse
2014: Hopelessly Devoted
2021: Paradise
Novel
2016: The Bricks That Built the Houses, Bloomsbury Circus, London
Non-fiction book
2020: On Connection, Faber & Faber, London
Discography
Studio albums
List of studio albums, with selected details and chart positions
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