SXSW Live Shot: Kate Tempest

Another SXSW Tuesday night, another out-the-door line at Latitude 30’s British Music Embassy.

The traditional opening night showcase has become a combination meet-up place for incoming Brits, and the inevitable location of at least one ‘you had to be there moment’ (see Pulled Apart by Horses’ table-wrecking set five years ago). No such visual fireworks from Kate Tempest, but the 29-year-old MC and award-winning poet doesn’t need them. Her lyrics slice and demolish hard enough, making her the vanguard of Britain’s burgeoning urban wordsmith scene, skating between commercially successful rap and critically lauded poetry.

She admits, it’s taken 10 years to get to Austin. She seems joyous, unwilling to waste a moment. “Do me a favor,” she begs, “be in this room, put your phones away.”

Being here makes evocative sense for her. After all, it’s not just the unruly shock of hair shoved under a cap that summon specters of Janis Joplin, but the sense of a genre turned on its ear. Acid House sensibilities, trip-hop sensitivities, and grime grittiness combine as a state of the nation address to UK rap, sparking dancing in the rain-spotted crowd outside.

She’s at her most powerful when the beats are stripped away, revealing her manic street preaching instincts, the calm center of her own tempest. Relieved of rhythm, the social commentary of posh rap critique “Marshall Law” evolves into slice of life drama, while the anti-consumerist creed of “Hold Your Own” is as much William Blake as Chuck D.

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