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Last time we covered poet, author and rapper Kate Tempest she was dipping her toes into dance music by featuring on the effervescent Our Town by producers letthemusicplay. Fast forward seven months and she's signed with Big Dada, home to uniquely British voices Wiley, Roots Manuva and Speech Debelle, and created her debut album, or "novel rhyme". Everybody Down was created with producer Dan Carey (MIA, Kylie, Hot Chip) in a two week burst of creativity that initially started out as an exploratory session to see what they could come up with. What they've in fact created is a novel in musical form (although there will actually be a proper novel based on the album released next year by Bloomsbury) that moves through twelve chapters (songs) telling one long, complex story and focusing on a specific set of characters. Premiered here is the first single in the shape of the excellent The Beigeness, which pairs Tempest's passionate talk-rap style with a fuzz bass-heavy backdrop that's peppered with taught guitar riffs, distant feedback and echoey drums. But it's Tempest's lyrics that stand tall, with her poet's eye for transforming the unspoken into, well, poetry.

The Beigeness is out on 12 May, while Everybody Down is out on 19 May via Big Dada.