Kae Tempest Announces New Album 'The Line Is a Curve' with Kevin Abstract, Lianne La Havas

Hear the Abstract-assisted single "More Pressure" below

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished Jan 10, 2022

Kae Tempest has shared details of a new album. The English rapper/spoken word artist will release The Line Is a Curve on April 8 via American Recordings/Republic Records.

The Line Is a Curve, produced by Dan Carey with executive production from Rick Rubin, is Tempest's fourth studio album. The 12-song set follows their 2019 full-length release, The Book of Traps and Lessons, and their 2021 play Paradise, which premiered at the National Theatre in London last year.

Joining Tempest on The Line Is a Curve are Brockhampton's Kevin Abstract, Lianne La Havas, Grian Chatten of Fontaines D.C. and South London spitter Confucius MC. Abstract appears on first single "More Pressure" which can be heard alongside a lyric video below.

A press release reveals the collaboration came about after Rubin played Abstract and his Brockhampton groupmates The Book of Traps and Lessons during a studio session, leading the group to reach out to Tempest afterwards with words of thanks for their musical inspiration.

Tempest shares of their new material, "The Line Is a Curve is about letting go. Of shame, anxiety, isolation and falling instead into surrender. Embracing the cyclical nature of time, growth, love. This letting go can hopefully be felt across the record. In the musicality, the instrumentation, the lyricism, the delivery, the cover art. In the way it ends where it begins and begins where it ends. I knew I wanted my face on the sleeve."

Indeed, The Line Is a Curve marks Tempest's first LP since 2014 to feature themselves on the cover. They continue, "Throughout the duration of my creative life, I have been hungry for the spotlight and desperately uncomfortable in it. For the last couple of records, I wanted to disappear completely from the album covers, the videos, the front-facing aspects of this industry. A lot of that was about my shame but I masked it behind a genuine desire for my work to speak for itself, without me up front, commodifying what felt so rare to me and sacred. I was, at times, annoyed that in order to put the work out, I had to put myself out.

"But this time around, I understand it differently. I want people to feel welcomed into this record, by me, the person who made it, and I have let go of some of my airier concerns. I feel more grounded in what I'm trying to do, who I am as an artist and as a person and what I have to offer. I feel less shame in my body because I am not hiding from the world anymore. I wanted to show my face, and I dreamed of it being Wolfgang Tillmans who took the portrait."

The Line Is a Curve is now available for pre-order.


The Line Is a Curve:

1. Priority Boredom
2. I Saw Light (with Grian Chatten)
3. Nothing To Prove
4. No Prizes (with Lianne La Havas)
5. Salt Coast
6. Don't You Ever
7. These Are The Days
8. Smoking (with Confucius MC)
9. Water In The Rain
10. Move
11. More Pressure (with Kevin Abstract)
12. Grace

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