Benjamin Clémentine

Benjamin SainteClémentine born 7 December 1988 is a British composer musician and actor Born and raised in London Clementine later moved to Paris where he experienced homelessness for a time After moving back to London he released his debut album At Least for Now which won the 2015 Mercury Prize In February 2019 he was named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in recognition of his contribution to the arts A number of critics have described him as becoming one of the great singersongwriters of his generation and the future sound of London whilst struggling to place his music in any one genre Clementines compositions are musically incisive and attuned to the issues of life but also poetic mixing revolt with love and melancholy sophisticated lyricism with slang and shouts and rhyming verse with prose monologues He often performs topless and barefoot onstage dressed entirely in black or dark grey with a long wool trench coat The youngest of five children Benjamin Clementine grew up in Edmonton London with his strict Roman Catholic grandmother After she died he moved in with his parents The family acquired a piano when Clementine was 11 and Benjamin played it when he could but his father who had hoped his son would study law forbade him to spend time with musical instruments Clementine could not read sheet music but in a few months he started imitating the work of classic composers Erik Satie and Claude Debussy learned from listening to Classic FM on the radio after becoming bored with pop music and continued to play discreetly for the next five years until his parents divorce Clementine left school at 16 following which he had a dispute with his family and ended up in Camden Town London homeless and in psychological and financial difficulties He relocated to Paris at age 19 where he spent a number of years busking and playing in bars and hotels in Place de Clichy while sleeping on the streets He eventually moved to a hostel in Montmartre where he paid 20 to live in a tenman bunkbed room For the next three years he wrote and composed songs and playing a halfbroken guitar and a cheap keyboard he had acquired During this period he developed into a cult figure in the Parisian music scene After four years of living as a vagabond he was discovered by an agent who later introduced him to Matthieu Gazier who would go on to become Clementines manager for a period of time In 2012 whilst playing a gig at the Festival de Cannes he met Lionel Bensemoun a business mogul in France and together set up the record label Behind so that Clementine could record and publish his music He eventually came to the attention of the French press who described him as la révélation anglaise des Francos the English revelation of the Francofolies festival He was then invited to the Rencontres Trans Musicales of Rennes in France in December 2012 where he performed for the first time on a large stage and played four nights consecutively Clementine eventually signed a joint music license contract between Capitol Virgin EMI and Barclay Source Article Benjamin Clementine from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30