Benjamin Clementine
He is a Black-British artist, poet, vocalist, composer, multi-instrumentalist and musician.
Asked by Vice magazine in 2015 why he always wore a long coat and no shoes on stage, Clementine said “Everything happened naturally. I didn’t plan it: ‘when I get a little bit famous, my image will be this’. There was a time in Paris, a friend of mine gave me shoes, his special shoes, because I didn’t really have any shoes, so he gave me his shoes to wear for an event where I had to play. So I was playing the piano and the shoes were quite slippery. I couldn’t really hit the pedal. I took them off and threw them away. And I started playing with bare feet, and that was it. I never wore shoes again because I realised how it felt. I was freer. And then with the coat, it’s eventually, of course, an image”.
