Kate Tempest
Everybody Down
19 May 2014
Big Dada
4 stars out of 5
Of all the best hip hop albums of 2014 (and yes, there were
some good ones, and Young Thug didn’t rap any of them), Kate Tempest’s Everybody Down was definitely one of the
least expected and least orthodox. English, white, female—three strikes, you’re
out, right? How about “no background in hip hop” and “award-winning
professional playwright”? Still no cred? Well, it doesn’t matter, because there
hasn’t been a grittier and harder-hitting hip hop record to come out of the UK since the
glory days of grime a decade ago. Produced by Dan Carey, who has worked with a
long list of stellar names (Hot Chip, Franz Ferdinand, La Roux, Lily Allen, Bat
for Lashes, Mystery Jets…), Everybody
Down doesn’t attempt to mimic any presently existing trends in the greater
hip hop world, instead opting for a sound that is a hybrid of retro-electro and
a species of lo-fi nu-disco previously unknown to science.
Tempest’s subject material deals with the inner emotional
lives of the impoverished working class of London . She tells insightful, nuanced,
stories about how they struggle with their relationships and economic realities.
The jealousy that uneducated men feel about their girlfriend’s careers, the meaningless
nights drinking at the discothèque, the drug deals, the dreams whose realization
is always just out of reach—all contained within a song-cycle that gives us
living, breathing characters that we get to know and empathize with over the
course of the album. Perhaps most striking is the fact that Tempest never
refers to herself over the album’s twelve tracks. There isn’t a single tired
and typical hip hop trope, be it a diss of another MC or a boast about money or
cars, to be found anywhere—Tempest shows you how good she is without having to
constantly tell you. If you don’t believe me, check out the album’s closer, “Happy
End,” and get yourself schooled in what hip hop could be.
reviewed by Richard Krueger
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