Everybody Down

by Kae Tempest

Everybody Down is Kate’s debut solo album, recorded with long-term collaborator and producer Dan Carey. In a burst of intense creativity, they put down the whole twelve track album in a fortnight having spent almost a year developing the characters and story. The result is a revelation. Tempest takes the tropes of the hip hop story – drugs, money, gangsters – and brings them to life in a whole new way, a London way, but also a completely personal way, where she inhabits the different characters and shows the boredom and fear in their lives rather than some faked glamour, shows more than anything their need for love.

Carey, meanwhile, sculpts soundscapes that pay tribute to the roots of hip hop while melding into the themes Tempest addresses, tough and gritty but intensely musical, the sound of a wet winter’s night out in London.

Genres: Music

Audiobook

Published May 19, 2014

Reviews

[RatGrrrl · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's truly obscene that this was a debut.

Full narrative concept album that goes so hard and so deep.

I'm very much in a Kae Tempest hyperfixation right now, after being so powerfully moved by On Connection and picking up a bunch of their books second hand.

More thoughts in the future.

[Yasoo · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion it's her best work so far. It's focused and profound. Tackling issues in human relation and our society through the story of Becky, Harry and Pete.

[Kenneth Laddish · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best rap albums - I guess hip hop is truly being taken seriously now that whites are so good at it

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

The love story of Becky and Harry set to music brilliantly by Kae Tempest. As it counts as an album as well as poetry, you can find it on Spotify (and no doubt other streaming services).