In 1997 he received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to the CD Farewells & Fantasies, a retrospective of music by '60s protest singer Phil Ochs.

His book Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New South was published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster in 2004 and issued in soft cover by the University of Georgia Press in 2006.

Kemp began his journalism career as a newspaper reporter at the Times-News (Burlington, North Carolina), and later as an editor at the science magazine Discover.

During Kemp's tenure at Rolling Stone, several acts made first-time appearances on the magazine's cover including Beck, Marilyn Manson, The Prodigy and Sean Combs.

Kemp also was responsible for assigning a controversial investigative cover story on Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, reported by a team of three journalists, staff writers John Colapinto (now at The New Yorker), Matt Hendrickson (Garden and Gun) and Eric Boehlert (Media Matters), and without Vedder's cooperation.