Kate Tempest
Imagine if the serious literary competition in your country was won by rapper... In Britain, something similar happened when the prestigious Ted Hughes Award was won by the then 26 year old Kate Esther Calvert, known by her stage name as Kate Tempest.
11. March 2015
The tempest with which the rapper “of bars and night buses” wiped out her competitors did not escape the attention of editors of newspapers like The Guardian and New York Times.
In her evocative version of Icarus, Kate sings: “Gifts are dangerous when they are given and not earned...". Aware of the lessons deriving from the Icarus story, she works hard to develop her talent. She has worked with organizations such as Yale University, the BBC, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has already performed at festivals such as Glastonbury and Latitude. Kate has featured on songs with Sinead O Connor, Bastille, the King Blues, Damien Dempsey and Landslide. In 2014 she released her debut album called "Everybody Down”, which was nominated for the Mercury Prize.
In Slovakia, there are certain books we are required to read at school, and The Economist recommends her performances as “mandatory viewing” for all teenagers. There is also high praise from The Huffington Post and The Guardian, according to which her theatre Brand New Ancients does not even belong in theatres, but in cathedrals due to its sanctity. And yes, we are still talking about a young rapper who takes hip-hop to a new level, where rough speech is drowned by insistent whisper...
The New Your Times remembers how Kate stood before the microphone on the stage of the London club Electric Brixton and approached the crowd of thousand people in a rather peculiar way: “I want you to get out from behind your phones! This is reality! This is going on! Being together in one room, living the same moment is a level of interaction that many of us never experience.”
Well, here’s a warning for those who want to see a live performance by the lady who has cooked the goose for so many British rappers and poets. Be so good as to leave your phone in your pocket so Kate doesn’t pay you a visit and hide it for you.