Kate 'Kae' Tempest | Artist
Kate 'Kae' Tempest is an English spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist and playwright born 1985 in London. In 2013, Tempest won the Ted Hughes Award for their work "Brand New Ancients", and was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society, a once-a-decade accolade. Tempest grew up one of five children whose father was a corporate media lawyer, and their mother a teacher. 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. They worked in a record shop from age 14-18 and first performed at the age of 16 years, at open mic nights at Deal Real, a small hip-hop store in Carnaby Street in London's West End. Tempest went on to support acts such as John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg and Benjamin Zephaniah. They toured internationally with their band Sound of Rum until they disbanded in 2012. Tempest's live band now consists of Kwake Bass (drums), Dan Carey (synths) and Hinako Omori (keyboards). To-date Tempest has released five excellent albums of spoken word poetry/hip-hop; Brand New Ancients (2014), Everybody Down (2014), Let Them Eat Chaos (2016), The Book of Traps and Lessons (2019), and The Line is a Curve (2022). Everybody Down and Let Them Eat Chaos were both nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. They are also a prolific author having to-date published seven poetry collections, four plays, one novel and one non-fiction book. Tempest has been published in nine languages and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2015. In a glowing review of their art, The Guardian newspaper summed up Tempest's performance work in the following quote: "[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." The artist describes a compulsion for performance as a form of escape from prejudicial social norms, "It shifted people's attention away from the body.. when I had rapping and lyricism, that's what I was. Everything else disappeared. I almost left my body behind, and became an artist." Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020, using pronouns they/them.
Artist Website: katetempest.co.uk
Featured Albums: Kate 'Kae' Tempest
Related Artists: Kae Tempest, The Comet is Coming
Collections: Women of Note
