80%
view 
Members
1 Female
Origin
London, England
Genre
Hip-Hop
Style
Urban/R&B
Mood
---
Born
1 FemaleOrigin
London, EnglandGenre
Hip-HopStyle
Urban/R&BMood
---
Born
1986
Active
1986 to Present...
Cutout
Alternate Name
Kae Tempest
Most Loved Tracks4 users
Kate Tempest - The Beigeness4 users
Kate Tempest - Europe Is Lost4 users
Kate Tempest - Lonely Daze4 users
Kate Tempest - Marshall Law4 users
Kate Tempest - Ketamine For Breakfast
Music Video LinksArtist Biography
Available in:
Tempest grew up in Brockley, South London, one of five children. She describes growing up in "a shitty part of town, but in a nice house where there was always food". Her father was a labourer who went on to train as a criminal lawyer. She enjoyed her primary school experience but was unhappy at secondary school. She left school with no A levels but cites her English teacher Mr Bradshaw as an encouraging influence who read her early poetry and gave her books to inspire her. She says she had a "wayward youth", living in squats, "hanging around on picket lines rapping at riot cops". She worked in a record shop from age 14 to 18. At 16, she studied music at Croydon’s Brit School for performing arts and at Goldsmiths college, where she studied poetry for a time. She describes the London marches to call an end to the Iraq war as a point of disillusionment when she saw that the message of millions of people did not change the direction of the war.
Tempest first performed when she was 16, at open mic nights at Deal Real, a small hip hop store on Carnaby Street in London's West End. She went on to support acts such as John Cooper Clarke, Billy Bragg, Benjamin Zephaniah and Scroobius Pip. She toured Europe, Australia and America with her band 'Sound Of Rum' and worked with organisations such as Yale university, the BBC, Apples and Snakes, The Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Tempest has performed at such venues as the Glastonbury Festival, Latitude, The Wandering Word tent at Shambala, The Big Chill and the Nu-Yorican poetry cafe, where she won two poetry slams. Her first poetry book was Everything Speaks in its Own Way, followed by her first work of theatre, Wasted. At 26, she launched the theatrical spoken word piece Brand New Ancients at the Battersea Arts Centre (2012), to great critical acclaim. The piece also won Tempest the 2013 Off West End Award ("The Offies") for "Best TBC Production". Tempest's influences include Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, W B Yeats, William Blake, W H Auden and Wu Tang Clan.
Wide Thumb
Clearart
Fanart
Banner
User Comments
No comments yet..
Unlocked
