On 2019’s The Book of Traps and Lessons, their first Rubin-produced project, Carey reined in his sound, leaving more space for Tempest’s words.

It’s hard to ignore that this is the first album that Kae has released since sharing with the world that they identify as non-binary.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. By contrast, some tracks on The Line Is A Curve do not succeed in drawing us in with quite the same impact, and that’s because they function in a fashion that is the polar opposite to both tracks discussed above. This album has a beautiful heart, there is so much love running through it and I can’t wait for people to experience it. It might be a stretch to say that this process of coming to terms with and sharing their identity with the world has freed them up in their music as well as their life, but there are hints that this is how they feel on songs such as ‘I Saw Light’: ‘Heart is a yellowing brick/Dead set on a wish that can never exist/A transition/I want to be is but I’m isn’t. All of this over one of the most carefully constructed beats of their career, each key change making the hairs on your arms stand up.

It is like a confessional as they communicate via a distinctive form of rap poetry that only they understand.These are an unquestionably more personal collection of words, particularly when compared to Let Them Eat Chaos, yet they are also more opaque. On every album they release there is at least one song that towers above everything else and makes itself the centrepiece and this time it is the hypnotic, mesmerising, and beautiful ‘Salt Coast. Tempest’s work is at its most profound when the cadence and rhythms embody those of the spoken word.

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. The tension between the self and the collective is central to their work; so is narrative’s role in bridging those two realms. Notwithstanding that, Tempest remains one of our most innovative and thought provoking artists and despite the occasional mis-step, there is plenty enough going on within this album to keep us hooked. To date, they have been responsible for three plays, a novel, six poetry books and a work of non-fiction.The theatrical ebbs and flows of their vocals on Salt Coast acutely capture the timely themes of “sleeve-pulling nervousness” caused by everything from Covid to micro-aggressions.