And just three songs later, with an inspiring chorus of ‘move, I’ll fight you till I win’, we have the closest thing to a club banger that Kae has released so far. Tempest and Carey have spent the last several years learning from the studio guru, using their time at Shangri-La trying to reconstruct the relationship between Tempest’s intricately polysyllabic verses with Carey’s post-dubstep productions. For everything I’ve said about new influences and more musical variety on this album, ‘Salt Coast’ is here to remind us that Kae is a poet at heart – it’s a lyrical masterclass, an inspiring story, an incredible moment of truth, another time when Kae chooses to tell us to try our best and accept when things go wrong. These general themes, of acceptance, resilience, surrender are also about where I’m at in my personal life, in my journey towards a greater acceptance of myself as an artist and as a human being. Elsewhere, on “Priority Boredom,” where each verse is dedicated to its own vowel sound, the monotony of individualism is cleverly represented with congested “or” sounds: “Priority boredom/Gorging/Four courses/Forced absorption,” they spit, the words like slushy fruit in their mouth.

The preceding track, Nothing To Prove, has the intensity and urgency of anything on Let Them Eat Chaos. I Saw Light is an outstanding track, with its intimate feel creating an impression of Tempest and Chatten facing each other in an unfurnished room, lit only by a dim, bare bulb.It’s a few minutes of magic that sits in the middle of probably the most exciting album Kae has released so far. We encounter the contributions of artists who I love and admire, guest vocalists and instrumentalists, and so we defeat the sense of isolation felt in the opening track with a sense of deeply connected community.

In these more positive moments, Tempest can come across as mawkish; their style has always felt aligned with the heightened emotion of the American slam poetry scene, and This Line Is a Curve brims with chicken-soup-for-the-teenage-soul lyrics. Because no matter how much a person grapples with, realises, deeply understands, about life and their place in it, we still wake up in the morning back to square one. The core of the record is that the pressures we face do not always have to be heavy burdens, but can be reframed; the more pressure a person is under, the greater the possibility for release. To date, they have been responsible for three plays, a novel, six poetry books and a work of non-fiction.Again, it’s a guitar-led piece, albeit this time it’s an acoustic guitar, delicately plucked, that provides the platform for Tempest’s lyrics. C.'s Grian Chatten, Lianne La Havas and Confucius MC, the album is out now via American Recordings / Republic Records and was mastered at Abbey Road by Christian Wright. It features guest spots from Grian Chatten, Lianne La Havas, Confucius MC, assia and Kevin Abstract. The Line Is a Curve is a sentimental, prophetic, mimetic, and worldbuilding work that blends moody electronica with elements of neo-soul and grimey hip-hop. While on the majority of their previous releases Kae was the sole performer on most songs, across this latest work they don’t only bring in big name guests but they also let them have starring roles and take some of the key moments on the album.

Starting from a place of isolation and dejection, Tempest ends with community-facing lightness and love. Next to these, there are album highlights such as ‘More Pressure’ (with Kevin Abstract) and ‘Nothing To Prove’ that are the most pure Hip-Hop songs on any of Kae’s four albums so far, no longer blurring the lines between rap and spoken word. Being more honest with the world and my community about who I am and letting go of some heavy heavy shame, which is a glorious thing.The tight iambic trimeter of “Nothing to Prove”—ten lines of six slick syllables—sounds like bullets. Their second album, Let Them Eat Chaos will go down as one of the most original albums of this millennium. Still, when Tempest decelerates the flow on No Prizes, the suspense and intensity fade away, leaving the track feeling a little empty. As the album progresses, Carey’s instrumentation becomes wider and lighter, and Tempest’s lyrics become more optimistic—“More grounded/More rooted/Less convoluted,” they rap on “More Pressure” over Carey’s euphoric, oscillating synth. In interviews, Tempest has described The Line Is A Curve as a more personal record and that is manifested visually from the outset, with their face adorning the album’s artwork.