Kele Okereke

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Kele Okereke 2009
Kele Okereke 2009
Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
The boxer
  DE 67 07/02/2010 (1 week)
  AT 71 07/02/2010 (1 week)
  CH 98 04/07/2010 (1 week)
  UK 20th 07/03/2010 (3 weeks)
trick
  UK 99 10/25/2014 (1 week)
Singles
Tenderoni
  AT 63 07/23/2010 (2 weeks)
  UK 31 06/26/2010 (3 weeks)
Everything You Wanted
  UK 93 08/28/2010 (1 week)
Ready 2 Go ( Martin Solveig feat.Kele)
  DE 45 05/27/2011 (14 weeks)
  AT 42 05/27/2011 (13 weeks)
  CH 70 07/03/2011 (2 weeks)
  UK 48 07/09/2011 (1 week)
Turn It Around ( Sub Focus feat. Kele)
  UK 14th 05/10/2013 (4 weeks)

Kelechukwu Rowland Okereke (born October 13, 1981 in Liverpool ) is a British musician , singer and guitarist. Okereke is the front man and singer of the rock band Bloc Party and has also been active as a solo artist under the stage name Kele since 2010 .

Life

youth

Okereke was in 1981 Liverpool born and grew up in a Catholic igbo - Nigerian family in London on. His mother worked as a midwife , his father was a molecular biologist . While studying English at King's College London , he met his future bandmate Russell Lissack. After moving from home in 2001, he met Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong. Together the four founded the band Bloc Party in 2003 .

Success with Bloc Party

In 2005, Bloc Party made their breakthrough with their debut album Silent Alarm and celebrated international success. The follow-up albums A Weekend in the City and Intimacy were also extremely successful. Okereke's very personal lyrics in particular are the band's trademarks. Over the years more and more electronic components have been incorporated into the pieces in addition to the pure rock elements in the music. In October 2009 the band members announced that they would take a longer break for the time being and take their time working on the fourth album. The reason given by the band was that they wanted to devote themselves to various solo activities first. In 2012 and 2016, the band released further albums, albeit the latter with a different line-up.

Solo career

Already in 2009 the track It's Not the Things You Say appeared on the album Kaleidoscope by the Dutch DJ Tiësto , which included a guest appearance by Okereke. On June 14, 2010, the single Tenderoni was released from the first solo album The Boxer , released a week later . Okereke justified the choice of the album title with the words

"As a boxer, you have to rely on nobody else but yourself to achieve what it is you want to achieve. Even though you take hits, you have to keep focus on your priorities and keep going. I thought that was an inspiring image. "

There are hardly any typical rock music elements left on the album. Okereke describes the work on the album as a "liberating experience". Rock music bores him now, but in electronic music "everything [...] suddenly becomes exciting again." A revival of Bloc Party therefore seemed uncertain for a long time. On August 16, 2010 the second single Everything You Wanted was released , the third single On the Lam followed in November 2010 as a download only.

In November 2011 Okereke released the EP The Hunter , the single What Did I Do was released in advance , which he recorded together with singer Lucy Taylor. After a few guest appearances in songs by other artists, some of which were also released as single, and the release of a new Bloc Party album in 2012, Okereke announced his second solo album Trick for October 2014 . This was released on October 13, 2014, when the songs Doubt , Coasting and Closer were released as singles.

Okereke's third solo album Fatherland was released on October 6, 2017 . He published this under his full name Kele Okereke, giving the reason that he wanted to make a clear distinction to his previous solo albums. The music on this album no longer contained any electronic borrowings, but rather belongs to the genre " Folk- Pop". The titles Streets Bern Talkin ' and Yemaya were presented in advance .

Personal

In March 2010, Okereke came out as homosexual in BUTT magazine . A few months later he was voted Sexiest Out Gay Male Artist by the music website lp33.tv. He currently lives in Shoreditch , London. With his partner and the help of a surrogate mother, Okereke had a daughter in December 2016.

Discography

Albums

EPs

  • 2011: The Hunter (Wichita Recordings)
  • 2013: Heartbreaker (Crosstown Rebels)
  • 2014: Candy Flip (Crosstown Rebels)

Singles

  • 2010: Tenderoni
  • 2010: Everything You Wanted
  • 2010: On the Lam
  • 2011: What Did I Do
  • 2014: Doubt
  • 2014: Coasting
  • 2014: Closer

Guest appearances and featureings

swell

  1. ↑ a b Chart sources: DE AT CH UK
  2. ↑ Life after Bloc Party. In: yaez . Retrieved June 23, 2011 .
  3. ↑ Kele Okereke Relies On Himself For The Boxer on chartattack.com (engl.)
  4. ↑ Kele Okereke: The Endorphin Machine on zeit.de from June 17, 2010 (accessed on August 23, 2010)
  5. ↑ Evan Minsker: Bloc Party's Kele Announces New LP Trick. In: Pitchfork . Pitchfork Media Inc., July 23, 2014, accessed July 24, 2014 .
  6. ↑ a b Sabine Winkler: Interview with Kele Okereke: "As a father, every day is an adventure!" Interview on musikexpress.de from October 6, 2017
  7. ↑ Bloc party singer Kele Okereke: "I made Britney" on stern.de from June 18, 2010 (accessed on August 23, 2010)
  8. ↑ Cam Lindsay: Bloc Party's Kele Okereke. (No longer available online.) Exclaim !, Archived from the original on July 11, 2010 ; accessed on August 24, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / exclaim.ca

Web links

Commons : Kele Okereke  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Okereke, Kele
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Okereke, Kelechukwu Rowland (full name); Kele
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British musician, singer and guitarist
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1981
PLACE OF BIRTH Liverpool , UK