Song of the Day: Kate Tempest - Lonely Daze

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Afternoon Show with Kevin Cole, is “Lonely Daze” by Kate Tempest from the 2014 album Everybody Down on Big Dada.

Kate Tempest - Lonely Daze (MP3)

With work in the realms of spoken word, written poetry, and hip hop, Kate Tempest is a five-tool wordsmith with a commanding musical and lyrical voice. Born Kate Esther Calvert, the South East London artist first found a love for words in her secondary school literature class, and made her first creative outings at local open mic nights. Moving from participating in bands to the medium of spoken word, Tempest soon moved onto touring with other spoken word poets, including John Cooper Clarke and Scroobius Pip, before focusing on her written work. Her theatrical spoken word performance piece, Brand New Ancients, won the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for Poetry. Tempest's debut hip hop album, 2014's Everybody Down, was made with producer Dan Carey in two weeks, and found critical acclaim in England, including a Mercury Music Prize nomination. Everybody Down spins a narrative of young people in modern, economically-challenged Britain, and "Lonely Daze" stands as the album's thesis statement. Riding Carey's rumbling, percussive beat, Tempest furiously spits the tale of Becky and Peter, two individuals seeking professional and personal fulfillment and finding neither one. That's a reductive summarization at best though, since Tempest's flexible flow and detail-oriented pathos makes for a compelling tale of going to the club, going to the dole, and repeating. Not terribly unlike a similar English narrative-based hip-hop album released ten years earlier, Everybody Down is a fascinating, magnetic story, with Tempest standing as the only character more interesting than its protagonists.

Kate Tempest will be performing at Sasquatch! this year and in Portland at the Doug Fir the night before. Keep up with Kate's North American tour and get any updates at her Facebook and website. Below, watch Kate rap "Lonely Daze" acapella in 2014.