FEATURE:
Spotlight
Tems
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HERE is another artist I am spotlighting…
who has been on the scene a bit and has amassed an army of followers. That being said, many of us do not know about the amazing Tems. The Nigerian-born artist is one of the most amazing around. She has a sound like nobody else. I want to get to some interviews in a bit. A couple of weeks back, it was reported that she is working on a collaboration with Drake:
“A new collaboration between Tems and Drake is set to drop in 2022.
The New Gen: Spring 2021 artist shared confirmed the news in a recent interview with The Guardian, with the publication stating that the cut will most likely appear on her upcoming album. Tems called Drizzy “someone that I listened to since I was a teenager” and revealed “in a solid impersonation” that he once told her, “Bruuuh, how – why – are you so good?”
The pair worked for the track “Fountains” on Certified Lover Boy, which arrived just before her latest EP, If Orange Was a Place. “I think this one is more fun,” Tems shared, comparing the project to 2020’s For Broken Ears. “After I healed, I let everything go and I started to live, I started to enjoy life. And this is what that EP is. It’s like a sequel. After healing comes life, comes fun, comes vibes, comes dancing.”
Stay tuned for more info on the new collab”.
The amazing Tems (Temilade Openiyi) released the E.P., If Orange Was a Place, on 15th September. It is a stunning work that everyone needs to hear. I shall drop in a review of that in a bit. The first interview that I want to get to is from The Line of Best Fit. They recognised her as an artist on the rise earlier this year:
“There were obstacles in her way to a career in music. Although she was disinclined to the idea, her family ensured that she made it to university, enrolling her in a course in South Africa. After her degree, she returned to Nigeria and found herself working an unchallenging office job as a digital marketer for an oil services company. After just six months, Tems knew that she wasn’t on the right path. “I wasn’t happy and I knew that music was all I wanted to do,” she says. One New Year’s Eve, she received a sign that change was coming: “I got a message on my devotional that said ‘Take a leap’, and I was just like ‘I’m quitting my job today’. So I quit it immediately.”
It meant abandoning the pre-ordained path expected of someone who goes to university in Nigeria: find a proper job, get married, and have children. “That’s not life. What kind of life is that?” Tems says firmly. “I was at a crossroads, to do what I really want to do or do what people were telling me to do either because they’re scared or have insecurities that they’re pushing onto me. I decided I don’t care what people think.” So she left behind her safe but staid existence to fully pursue music in 2018.
The speed of her rise in the resulting three years has been almost unfathomable: her first song “Mr Rebel” was followed by the massive “Try Me”, which earned over 12 million streaming plays and led to stellar guest spots with Khalid (“Know Your Worth”) and Wizkid (“Essence”). Soon after, she was chosen as one of Apple’s Rising Artists in Africa and became a key face of Nigeria's alté scene.
Tems is a triple threat – a singer, songwriter and producer. She took to production when she initially couldn’t find a good fit for her ambition and vision. “I couldn’t find anybody that understood my music,” she remembers. “Everyone was trying to do afrobeats at the time and I was exposed to much more than afrobeats. I just decided to produce myself since nobody understood me!” And her sound has helped her to forge a distinctive path in her home country. A potent mixture of alternative R&B and contemporary afrobeats, it’s the overarching atmosphere that especially distinguishes Tems: her mellow and melancholic touches are a contrast to the energy and upbeat of traditionally popular afrobeats. Where those songs favour lighter subjects like falling in love and partying, Tems is unfazed at being serious and introspective.
When I proffer that music today is increasingly becoming post-genre, it’s a landscape that Tems readily agrees suits her. “I didn’t know about genres when I started writing music,” she notes. “When I was much younger and writing songs, I didn’t know that music was called different things, that every song had different categories. I was just making music and then I found out the music I was making was R&B! I think the purpose should be just to create music. It doesn’t need a label.”
When Tems speaks of her herself or her life, she is slightly reserved. But when I ask about the connection between her spirituality and her music, she comes alive. “You feel spirituality but you just don’t recognise what it is,” she ponders. “It’s when you feel things deeply when you’re overrun by emotions, when something touches you, something you feel so deeply and you can’t explain what it is. A lot of time, you’ve experienced things spiritually but you just didn’t recognise it and misdiagnosed it.”
“Music is spiritual. It’s coming from my spirit and people connect with it because they have that same spirit within them. You can listen to something and it’ll make you cry. Why are you crying exactly? What is that thing that is making you cry? If you really look deep into it, you would see that you’ve been experiencing things spiritually already.”
Sometimes when you interview a musician, a dichotomy can often be observed between their speaking and singing style – perhaps a soft-spoken shyness in conversation from an otherwise abrasive performer. But there is no such distinction with Tems. She’s as serious and sincere in conversation as she is in her songs; she’s pensive but forthcoming with her answers, self-assured in her delivery. It’s why a sense of destiny seems to exist around Tems: the artist who knew she belonged in music and not in the office, the woman who saw herself rising higher in the world.
Her profound self-belief never feels self-serving though. When Tems describes the real meaning of her music, it’s filtered through her connection with her listeners. “I believe that me singing is a gift from God and I felt at the time that I was meant to use my gift to reach someone, even if it was one person or ten,” she says. “I just wanted to share my story and my life with someone going through the same things I was going through”.
I have only recently discovered Tems. She is an artist who is building up this huge profile. Guaranteed to be a huge name very soon. If you have not heard her music, go and seek out her stuff and follow her online (links are at the bottom of this feature). Last year, FADER spent some time getting to know an incredible artist:
“Tell us about the beginning, how you grew up?
I was born in Nigeria. My dad is British so we moved to England after I was born for three years. My parents got divorced when I was about five.
And how did that affect you growing up?
I don’t know, it was cool I guess. By the time I was conscious, I already got used to being with my mum. I have a brother, we were both raised by my mum. We lived in Ilupeju when we first moved back, then to Lekki Phase 1, then Ajah. I liked to play as a kid, but I was really quiet. I didn’t have a lot of friends in high school so I used to go to the music room. I’ve always been into music since I saw Beyoncé on TV when I was seven watching Pepsi Countdown.
I’ve always loved music and I tried to sing but I thought my voice was too heavy for a girl. I thought I sounded like a man so I used to sing with my falsetto and then I met my music teacher who helped train my voice and encouraged me to keep going.
My mum wasn’t a player of music, she didn’t listen to music apart from Christian music. Then I grew older and started getting CDs for my Walkman. I had Destiny’s Child, Lil Wayne — he’s like my idol — and Aaliyah. The first song I learned how to properly sing is Alicia Keys, “If I ain’t Got You,” at 12. When I had more options of music I started listening to Burna Boy, Asa, Lauryn Hill, Adele — I didn’t even know she was white until she blew up. I could relate to her voice a lot, she had a song called “Hometown Glory.” It's one of my favorites.
When did you start taking the idea of being an artist more serious?
I always wanted to be an artist when I started training, working with my music teacher. I also joined the choir when I was 17. All that was in secret; my mum was the only person that knew. My brother plays the guitar and we used to have mini-concerts in his room. He liked rock type songs — Coldplay, Paramore— but it was great ‘cause it made me learn how to form songs to anything. He’d play and I’d just freestyle.
Did you know how you wanted your music to sound like early on?
No. I think when I knew I wanted to do music I had a couple of things I knew I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to be fake, I didn’t want to sound like someone else. Why would you want to copy someone else when you could be original? It doesn’t make sense. You can never do your best by copying someone else, that means your second hand. To find my sound, I stopped listening to everybody when I was around 15 apart from the songs I made with my brother. I wanted to learn how to attack a song from what I was feeling, not what Beyoncé would do or anyone else.
When did you record your first song?
When I was in the choir I met someone who invited me to his studio. It was my first time going to a studio. We had a song which I can’t quite remember the name right now.
What happened next?
I tried to not go to school so I could pursue my career. That didn’t bang. But I did everything I could. When my mum applied to different universities and they would email me, I wouldn’t tell her till the deadline passes and I’ll be like, "Oh well the deadline passed, I might as well just stay home.” I tried that but she didn’t accept. She applied to a school in South Africa which had already started the session that year, but they allowed me to enroll. So I went like a week later.
How does it feel being part of the new generation of music artists coming out currently, being part of the select few of women right now?
I know there’s a reason why I have gone through everything I’ve gone through to make the kind of music that I make and reach the people that I'm reaching. I think everyone that I know is focusing on their individuality and being real, I think as a collective we’re definitely changing the way people see things. I feel good about it. I know God has good plans, I know it’ll be great. I know he’s opening doors, whether we know it or not. Right now, I don’t think it’s just ‘cause of the women, it’s a Nigerian thing. There’s a lot of focus on Nigeria right now, and the women are being highlighted which is very important because it’s opening doors and minds to women”.
I am going to end with a review of Tems’ latest E.P. A couple of weeks back, The Guardian featured her. We discover about her incredible rise, in addition to where she grew up and what her high school life was like:
“Essence, a melancholy yet feelgood anthem released last October by Wizkid, has belatedly emerged as one of the songs of 2021, gradually dominating global streaming charts – further aided by Justin Bieber’s patronage on a remix. But the track’s success is owed to a less familiar voice: the disarmingly immersive, coursing melodies of the chorus vocalist, the Nigerian singer, songwriter and producer Tems, AKA 26-year-old Temilade Openiyi.
Since 2018, local hits Mr Rebel, Try Me and the striking EP For Broken Ears have earned her prominence from within her country’s “alté” scene, an alternative music and fashion subculture that has both chafed against and flirted with the mainstream. Now, the stunning reach of Essence has been transformative. “I’m living in surprise – I just wake up and get surprised every day,” she says in a characteristically mellow voice on a video call from Lagos. The fandom of stars including Alicia Keys and Chris Brown on social media was topped only by bumping into Adele in LA. “She was singing Try Me and saying she’s heard me from Mr Rebel and I was like: what?”
Tems also appears on Certified Lover Boy, the Drake album that has topped the US and UK charts this month, on the song Fountains. “Insane, crazy,” she repeats in a loop, on her relationship with her countryman Wizkid, a “big brother” figure; and Drake, “someone that I listened to since I was a teenager. He was like, ‘Bruuuh, how – why – are you so good?’,” she says, in a solid impersonation. Another collaboration with him, likely on her forthcoming album, due next year, is in the works.
Amid the surprise of growing stardom, she is also circumspect. Her success has come on her own terms, resisting pressure to conform to the dominant, upbeat Afrobeats sound in Nigeria, or to recast herself in a more conventional light.
Openiyi was born in Lagos and moved to the UK with her British-Nigerian dad and Nigerian mum. After their divorce, she returned to Nigeria, where childhood in the sprawling commercial capital felt solitary, and writing songs and poems offered respite. “I used to write poems a lot – I’ll just sit down and write things I’m feeling, and it’ll come out so poetic, even if I’m just talking about breakfast,” she laughs. “So then I just started writing songs, at around 11. Some of them were about me not having friends, some of them were about my classmates saying I was weird. Some of it was just really sad. I didn’t really have much human interaction, but it helped me heal to be able to sing about what I was feeling.”
That sense of being an outcast continued into high school. “I just wasn’t popular; I cried a lot, I was very shy. I would cover my head with a blazer. I wouldn’t be able to talk – I just was a loner. And my only escape was the music room.” High school friendships blossomed later on, but the haven of the music room afforded hours to hone her sound, improvising songs from artists she loved – Kate Nash, Lauryn Hill, Lil’ Kim, Paramore, OutKast and Green Day – and driving a sense of boundlessness. That multiplicity is now heard in her songs, which layer various intonations of her own voice, creating a patchwork of self”.
I will finish off with a review of If Orange Was a Place. It is a magnificent E.P. from one of modern music’s finest talents. Pitchfork reviewed the E.P. and had this to say:
“This time last year, rising Nigerian pop star Tems was just about to unleash her debut EP, For Broken Ears. From the project’s seven bubbling tracks, the trio of “Damages,” “Free Mind,” and “The Key” stood out, and lead single “Damages” became the top-played song on Nigerian radio. The following months alerted the rest of the world to the magic of Tems: She offered a captivating performance on WizKid’s “Essence,” which secured a spot on Billboard Hot 100; a Justin Bieber-featuring remix elevated it into the Top 20. A short clip of Adele meeting Tems and joyfully singing Tems’ own song “Try Me” to her circulated online, and Drake engaged her for “Fountains,” a slow-burning track on his recent Certified Lover Boy. Now—with looks from some of the biggest artists in the world—Tems returns with a follow-up EP, If Orange Was a Place.
Even before she soared to mainstream recognition, Tems was protective of her signature sound. Early on in her career, she faced pressure from industry professionals to tweak her approach in order to succeed within the Nigerian music climate, she said in a recent radio interview. Tems, however, stuck with the distinctly emotional approach that lit up For Broken Ears, a collection of songs that sounded as deeply personal and turbulent as handwritten letters. Coupled with her freewheeling delivery and emotional rawness, whatever doubt anyone had about her artistry was dispelled.
If Orange Was a Place takes on a different texture and mood. If there’s any element still resonant, it’s Tems’ unrestricted expression, which she makes evident from opener and lead single “Crazy Tings.” Over brooding melodies and groovy percussion, Tems cooly sings about an estranged lover’s faults and pleas for peace: “Give me time/I need space.” The uptempo vibes of “Crazy Tings” slows on the Brent Faiyaz-assisted “Found.” Musically, the track recalls the early version of Tems, who loved to display her vocal prowess over gently strummed guitar. Turbulent feelings still weigh heavy on her mind, and she isn’t done analyzing them, concluding, “Basically, I might not be weak.” But by comparison to the clear emotional snapshots of From Broken Ears, the songwriting feels hazy. Faiyaz, seemingly playing the role of a comforting presence, offers words of healing and reassurance: “If you had you’ll forgive the past.”
After the moody haze of “Found,” the EP jerks back to vibrancy with the heady, swirling melodies and crisp, jazzy horns of “Replay.” Tems is coasting, soaring comfortably as she revels in her own elusive power: “Oh, my voice is a mystery,” she declares. Towards the end, she taps into intriguing pockets of melodies to empty her stash of unhealthy emotions: loneliness, heartbreak, and an unfortunate recent experience in Uganda, where Tems and fellow Nigerian artist Omah Lay were arrested last year for allegedly flouting COVID-19 protocols.
The similarity that links this EP and its predecessor is Tems’ preference to air her worries and talk about the darkness residing within. Save for closer “Vibe Out,” many of the songs linger in a familiar headspace—ruminating on being taken for granted as a lover, or trying to free oneself from the remnants of toxic emotions. Though she ups the ante on “Replay” and “Crazy Tings,” the more usual fare on “Found” and “Vibe Out” sometimes overshadows the new ideas, clouding the project’s intentions. If Orange Was a Place might not provide the same instant gratification as her debut, but it’s a presentation of her vulnerable self”.
One awesome artist who is going to continue to build her fanbase and release so much more great music, make sure that you familiarise yourself with the incredible Tems. On the evidence so far, through her music, she is most certainly…
A sensational force.
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