Kae Tempest announces new album 'The Line Is A Curve,' releases "More Pressure (feat. Kevin Abstract)"
British poet/rapper Kae Tempest has announced their new studio album today.
The Line Is A Curve will be released on April 8 via American Recordings/Republic Records. The 12-track album was produced by longtime collaborator Dan Carey with Rick Rubin lending a hand as an executive producer. The first single from the album titled “More Pressure,” which can be heard below, features Kevin Abstract. Other guests featured on the album are Grian Chatten, Lianne La Havas, and Confucius MC.
Tempest said this about their forthcoming studio album:
“‘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. 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.”
Pre-orders for The Line Is A Curve can be made here. This is the follow-up to their 2019 studio album The Book of Traps and Lessons.
The Line Is A Curve tracklisting
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”