Kate Tempest triumphs on the stage of a theatre as much as on the streets; a talented link traversing the role of hip-hop MC to award-winning playwright.
“I feel blessed to be working in all the fields I’m working in,” said the 29-year-old Tempest. “And, I don’t think it’s that much of a big deal that a person who loves writing would want to push themselves to engage with new forms. My favorite writers have all tried their hands at different forms. It’s not unusual to read a play by a poet or read a poem by a playwright.”
With an uncanny command of the language and a divine sense for eloquent cadence and inflection, the rapper/poet has turned heads at her recent U.S. tour dates with her graceful intermingling of musical articulations through a bracing and percussive delivery.
Tempest released a new single back in late January, a follow-up to her well-received album Everybody Down. “Bad Place For A Good Time” is a song that rises quietly like a melancholy moon, with softly crackled drum machines beating under a single repeated piano strike that resonates for entire measures under Tempest’s voice, starting as a whisper and rising, gaining vigor, flaring louder, oozing incrementally more ire and empathy, anger and compassion, swelling into a whirlpool of evocative imagery.
Tempest started her first series of U.S. performances at this year’s SXSW Festival. She grew up in South East London reading Joyce, Beckett and Woolf, while simultaneously listening to Wu-Tang Clan, Biggie Smalls, Lauryn Hill and Bob Dylan.
“The reason people find what I’m doing unusual is because one of the forms I work in is rap, and that speaks clearly, I think, of the ignorance that surrounds rapping as an art form,” said Tempest. “As if, because you cut your teeth as a rapper, it’s shocking to think that you might one day want to write a novel. I’m pretty sure that is about the prejudice and stereotyping that exists around the figure of a ‘Rapper’ as a caricature of stupidity and bravado. The rappers I grew up with were some of the smartest, most well-read, intelligent and thoughtful people I have ever met.”
During a self-described “wayward youth,” Tempest started working in a record shop at age 14, eventually engaging in (and thriving at) weekend rap battles, honing her talents toward the story-rhyme form. At 16, she started studies at the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology and later graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Everybody Down, her debut album (released via Big Dada Recordings and Ninja Tune), was a mesmeric narrative unfolding across 12 chapter-songs, with her her raw and elegant raps portraying a small cast of weary souls as they stumble through the grime and travails of their daily lives, each yearning for something better, if not just more substantial, in both life and in love.
As she raps on an older poem, “Renegade,” she classifies herself as “an old soul” who maintains “a young mind,” proclaiming to have “ink running through her veins.” Aside from her latest single, which you can stream on Spotify, you should also look for her debut novel, The Bricks That Built The Houses, which comes out via Bloomsbury next year. Everybody Down was produced by Dan Carey, whose resume includes works with Bloc Party, Bat For Lashes and Yeasayer; it was nominated for last year’s Mercury Prize.
“Telling rhymes and performing my lyrics has always been a massive part of what I do,” said Tempest of translating her rap songs and poetry to live performances, be they on tour as at SXSW or during presentations like Brand New Ancients. “This whole thing started off with me rapping, and a rhyme wasn’t finished until I spoke it out loud. It’s the most natural thing in the world for me to be onstage speaking my words. I love what happens in a room when the audience and the artist are together in the moment, each person contributing to everyone else’s experience.”
Everybody Down was produced by Tempest and Dan Carey, just the two of them working in the studio; the touring band came in to accommodate the live shows. Carey’s resume includes works with Bloc Party, Bat For Lashes and Yeasayer; the album was nominated for last year’s Mercury Prize.
“(Carey) and I have a crazy chemistry, one that I’ve never felt with another musician before,” Tempest said. “Pure exhilaration at the other’s talent and at the possibilities. When we were making Everybody Down, (Carey) was really busy, and would call me on his downtime and I would run over to the studio whenever he had a couple of hours spare. So the feeling was always one of urgency and joy to be together in the studio at last. So, we spent the best part of a year working in Dan’s downtime, snatching a couple hours here and there, I was writing for theatre at the time and was thinking lots about character and dialogue.”