Kate Tempest, Village Underground

Kate Tempest certainly lives up to her stormy name. The poet and playwright is famous not just for her writing, but the torrents of energy with which she performs. To celebrate her debut solo album, Everybody Down, she will perform at Shoreditch’s Village Underground this autumn. The live gig will further fuel the storm with a visually arresting choreography to compliment the lyrics.
Drawing on literature and hip hop, Eveybody Down is a concept album that vivifies a diverse and dynamic cast of South Londoners. Each track acts as a chapter, and builds an absorbing narrative. The tracks are due to be transformed from performance to prose in Tempest’s hotly-anticipated debut novel (to be published by Bloomsbury next year). 
Having spent a year developing plot and characters, Tempest met with producer Mr Dan (Dan Carey) to start the complex recording process. Their short session snowballed, as a frenzy of productivity saw the whole album completed in a fortnight. This energy, already resonant in the recordings, will be electrifying in live performance.
The Background...
Brockley-born Tempest spent her adolescence rapping ‘at strangers on night buses’ Her combined loves of literature and hip hop inspired a unique form of 'urban poetry', which has catapulted her to fame. Brand New Ancients, Tempest’s genre-busting masterpiece blew a breath of fresh air through the literary establishment with a combination of spoken word and theatre set over a live orchestral score. Tempest deservedly became the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Ted Hughes Poetry Award for New Work in Poetry 
She is admired by poets and rappers alike for writing in poetic meter, while delivering her lyrics with all the rawness and urgency of hip-hop or rap. Comfortable in her battered blue jeans and Nikes, she is a far cry from the stuffy image of a tortured bard locked in an ivory tower. Yet like her poetic forebears, she is not afraid to pose deep questions and push boundaries.