Kate Tempest

luka

Well-known member
Looking at the Wikipedia it's sort of amazing she went to the Brit school, and to goldsmiths! It's too perfect!
 

luka

Well-known member
Let them eat chaos.

I do feel a twinge of guilt at the thought of her reading this. I'm sorry Kate, I know you're not a bad person. You're just career minded, hard nosed, astute. I'm jealous of your success.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
Another thing which is fairly disgusting is the spoken word mode itself which is a halfway house for people who are too middle class and just as importantly not musical enough to rap (despite wanting to) but not literary and cerebral enough for poetry proper.

The lines are too flabby, too dopey on a technical level, for rap and too stupid for poetry.

Totally agree. Rap has to cut through in a way this stuff never does. It's an extremely focussed, disciplined art.
 

luka

Well-known member
Rappers are governed by the metronome, even when, especially when, they're messing about with it, so it's always going to fit together well. It keeps it honest.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's funny in a way because I'm a very early version of the middle class person growing up in an almost exclusively working class area of London and I get the sense that there are much more of these people now and they're exerting an influence, particularly in marketing and culture industries, fashion etc. They're more confident and entitled than me, usually better looking than me, but I can hear the tell tale signs in people's voices and the way they dress and so on.

Barty is a fellow member of this class.
 

luka

Well-known member
This is how the spectator sees it

"Metrical rigour and adroit rhyming are not yet among her accomplishments. She has a pretty, cherubic face, framed by unbrushed red blonde hair and she speaks in a Caribbean lite patois that translates ‘those things’ into ‘dem fings’. This linguistic pattern has many fans among the elite. It’s seen as an emblem of barbarous innocence, of instinctive passions bred in the ghetto, of an unschooled and therefore superior creativity. And it particularly excites Arts Council grandees who believe their mission is to reach down to the uncivilised and protean human type. Which Tempest perfectly represents."
 

luka

Well-known member
What it puts you in a position to do is to give people from solidly middle class affluent areas (people who dish out arts council grants for instance) the frisson that comes from contact with the street and the instinctive passions bred in the ghetto while still being fluent in the language and mores of the middle class. This is what a what a new generation is milking for all its worth. I think it's a driving force behind the gentrification of culture.
 

luka

Well-known member
people who's parent bought in Hackney in the early '00s say. It's quite interesting for me.
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
This is how the spectator sees it

"Metrical rigour and adroit rhyming are not yet among her accomplishments. She has a pretty, cherubic face, framed by unbrushed red blonde hair and she speaks in a Caribbean lite patois that translates ‘those things’ into ‘dem fings’. This linguistic pattern has many fans among the elite. It’s seen as an emblem of barbarous innocence, of instinctive passions bred in the ghetto, of an unschooled and therefore superior creativity. And it particularly excites Arts Council grandees who believe their mission is to reach down to the uncivilised and protean human type. Which Tempest perfectly represents."

I mean fuck the Spectator, and I can't help but hear David Starkey mithering about how "the whites are becoming black" in that jibe about patois, but there is a grain of truth in this, that it's "street" for people who aren't.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
luke's just annoyed because we've literally spent 18 months making an album of him reading his poems with my music in the background. she beat us to it.
 

luka

Well-known member
I mean fuck the Spectator, and I can't help but hear David Starkey mithering about how "the whites are becoming black" in that jibe about patois, but there is a grain of truth in this, that it's "street" for people who aren't.

Black people have changed the way white people speak. Starkey was right about that. Whether or not you see that as a sign of the decay of civilization is where the divide is.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Cripes. That instagram stuff is like what they write in wedding or bereavement cards from Hallmark, only for cool people.
 

sufi

lala
I made an effort a while back to listen to some of her stuff, having heard her name around and being an open minded soul in a general way and an enthusiast of culture, & it failed to set me on fire

surely a valid resentment for the likes of luka and poetix though would be down to her achieving success based on her unremarkable poetry, when you all do that stuff properly in obscurity - as well as you of course are able to see straight through the image to her true shitness,
Meanwhile, she is successful because non-poets may genuinely enjoy her work at a more superficial level. simple and obvious? but slightly less simplistic than simple sour grapes.

You are also, as far as i understand, not fruity young women, & that may also have something to do with your relative unpopularity compared to KT and also to do with the need for you two to produce great work, rather than relying on "personality", chin up!
 
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