Kate Tempest
Faut le reconnaitre, le jury du Mercury Prize cette année était plus excitant que la sélection, grâce à la présence de Sir Jarvis, mais surtout de Kate Tempest.
La jeune trentenaire du Sud de Londres m’avait littéralement ensorcelé avec l’album « EveryBody Down » paru sur Big Dada en 2014. Parler d’album est plutôt déplacé, car il s’agit de poésie posée sur disque, avec l’urgence de sortir toute cette verve. Douze chapitres, douze nouvelles, pour douze morceaux qui la placent plus dans la poésie, le roman, que dans le hip hop ou encore le spoken word.
Let them eat Chaos
Si elle ne paie pas de mine, son flow et ses textes invitent immédiatement à la fermer et à prêter l’oreille. Les choses s’incarnent sous nos tympans, à la manière d’une théâtre miniature, projeté dans les affres de notre monde moderne, mais sous une facture presque classique. C’est bien là l’originalité du propos de Kate, qui fait musique au rythme de nos pas dans la Cité.
Le nouvel album « Let Them eat Chaos », toujours aux côtés de Dan Corey, est sorti ce mois-ci, et on est toujours projeté dans une vie entière en quelques minutes :
Kate, Beat this generation !
Europe is lost, America lost, London lost
Still we are clamouring victory
All that is meaningless rules
We have learned nothing from history
People are dead in their lifetimes
Dazed in the shine of the streets
But look how the traffic’s still moving
The system’s too slick to stop working
Business is good. And there’s bands every night in the pubs
And there’s two for one drinks in the clubs
And we scrubbed up well
We washed off the work and the stress
Now all we want’s some excess
Better yet; A night to remember that we’ll soon forget
All of the blood that was bled for these cities to grow
All of the bodies that fell
The roots that were dug from the earth
So these games could be played
I see it tonight in the stains on my hands
The buildings are screaming
I can’t ask for help though, nobody knows me
Hostile, worried, lonely
We move in our packs and these are the rights we were born to
Working and working so we can be all that we want
Then dancing the drudgery off
But even the drugs have got boring
Well, sex is still good when you get it
To sleep, to dream, to keep the dream in reach
To each a dream
Don’t weep, don’t scream
Just keep it in
Keep sleeping in
What am I gonna do to wake up?
I feel the cost of it pushing my body
Like I push my hands into pockets
And softly I walk and I see it, this is all we deserve
The wrongs of our past have resurfaced
Despite all we did to vanquish the traces
My very language is tainted
With all that we stole to replace it with this
I am quiet
Feeling the onset of riot
Riots are tiny though
Systems are huge
The traffic keeps moving, proving there’s nothing to do
It’s big business baby and its smile is hideous
Top down violence, a structural viciousness
Your kids are doped up on medical sedatives
But don’t worry bout that, man. Worry bout terrorists
The water levels rising! The water levels rising!
The animals, the elephants, the polarbears are dying!
Stop crying. Start buying
But what about the oil spill?
Shh. No one likes a party pooping spoil sport
Massacres massacres massacres/new shoes
Ghettoised children murdered in broad daylight by those employed to protect them
Live porn streamed to your pre-teen’s bedrooms
Glass ceiling, no headroom
Half a generation live beneath the breadline
Oh but it’s happy hour on the high street
Friday night at last lads, my treat!
All went fine till that kid got glassed in the last bar
Place went nuts, you can ask our Lou
It was madness, the road ran red, pure claret
And about them immigrants? I can’t stand them
Mostly, I mind my own business
They’re only coming over here to get rich
It’s a sickness
England! England!
Patriotism!
And you wonder why kids want to die for religion?
It goes
Work all your life for a pittance
Maybe you’ll make it to manager
Pray for a raise
Cross the beige days off on your beach babe calendar
The anarchists are desperate for something to smash
Scandalous pictures of fashionable rappers in glamorous magazines
Who’s dating who?
Politico cash in an envelope
Caught sniffing lines off a prostitutes prosthetic tits
And it’s back to the house of lords with slapped wrists
They abduct kids and fuck the heads of dead pigs
But him in a hoodie with a couple of spliffs –
Jail him, he’s the criminal
Jail him, he’s the criminal
It’s the BoredOfItAll generation
The product of product placement and manipulation
Shoot em up, brutal, duty of care
Come on, new shoes
Beautiful hair
Bullshit saccharine ballads
And selfies
And selfies
And selfies
And here’s me outside the palace of ME!
Construct a self and psychosis
And meanwhile the people are dead in their droves
But nobody noticed
Well some of them noticed
You could tell by the emoji they posted
Sleep like a gloved hand covers our eyes
The lights are so nice and bright and lets dream
But some of us are stuck like stones in a slipstream
What am I gonna do wake up?
We are lost
We are lost
We are lost
And still nothing
Will stop
Nothing pauses
We have ambitions and friendships and courtships to think of
Divorces to drink off the thought of
The money
The money
The oil
The planet is shaking and spoiled
Life is a plaything
A garment to soil
The toil the toil
I can’t see an ending at all
Only the end
How is this something to cherish?
When the tribesmen are dead in their deserts
To make room for alien structures
Develop
Develop
And kill what you find if it threatens you
No trace of love in the hunt for the bigger buck
Here in the land where nobody gives a fuck