Kae Tempest

Kae Tempest (born 1985), formerly Kate Tempest, is an English spoken word performer, poet, recording artist, novelist, and playwright. As of 2026 he has released seven studio albums and many singles, as well as many collections of poetry, several plays, two novels, and one work of non-fiction. He has performed around the world, on tours and at festivals. Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020, then as a trans man in 2025. Tempest attended the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, and began to perform under the moniker "Excentral Tempest". From 2008 until around 2011, he performed as a rapper along with two musicians in the band Sound of Rum. In 2013, he won the Ted Hughes Award for his work Brand New Ancients, and was named a Next Generation poet in 2014 by the Poetry Book Society. Tempest's albums Everybody Down (2014) and Let Them Eat Chaos (2016) were nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, and the poetry book titled Let Them Eat Chaos was nominated for the Costa Book of the Year in the Poetry category. His debut novel The Bricks That Built the Houses (2016) was a Sunday Times best-seller and won the 2017 Books Are My Bag Readers' Award for Breakthrough Author. He was nominated as Best Female Solo Performer at the 2018 Brit Awards. Tempest released his fifth studio album Self Titled in 2025, and his second novel, Having Spent Life Seeking, was published on 30 April 2026.