Temilade Openiyi, popularly know as Tems is a Nigerian/British singer, song-writer and producer. One of the first thing’s about her that catches your immediate attention is her voice. It has this mellow and deep texture to it yet at the same time it’s so polarizing.
Most people, outside of Nigeria like myself, had never heard of her before prior to her feature on Wizkid’s hit single ‘Essence’ off of his 2020 album Made in Lagos. The song peaked at number 1 on BBC’s 1Xtra Airplay chart, giving her a first number 1 single.
The beginning
Tems started making music at a young age with her brother, he’d play the guitar while she would freestyle on the song. At the time she was very self-conscious of her voice as she felt it was fairly deep for a woman; for this reason she rarely sang in public. However after joining the choir in high school, her music teacher taught her how to control her voice better and encouraged her to continue singing.
She had always had her heart set on music to the point where she avoided enrolling at a university but never told her mother about it. Naturally her mother wasn’t happy and decided to enroll her at an institution in South Africa instead. While studying she would make music in her spare time with her guitar, and learned how to produce on YouTube. Eventually after working with a certain producer, she got the opportunity to be the opening act for South African rapper, Cassper Nyovest; performing a song called ‘Highlights’.
‘Mr Rebel’ & Headies nomination
After graduating, Tems moved back to Nigeria to work as a digital marketer however that didn’t stop her music ambitions; determined to make it work she quit her job. She sought after the help of producers to help her however they cost money which she barely had so she decided that she might as well do it herself. She put a video on Instagram and got feedback from Audio, two people that allowed her to use their studio for recording. A few weeks later she released ‘Mr. Rebel’; this gave her a small fan base — The Rebel Gang. Following this single she followed it up with another hit song ‘Try me’.
In 2019 she earned a nomination for the Headies Awards for Best Vocal performance for her single ‘Mr. Rebel’. And was also a nominee for the Next Rated artist for 2020.
‘For Broken Ears EP’
In 2020, Tems released her first EP called ‘For Broken Ears’, a 7 track project centered around R&B and Afrobeat centric sonics. I must admit for a first project this is a good body of work, she gives me H.E.R vibes with an African accent & rhythm.
In addition, ‘For Broken Ears’ ended Burna Boy’s six week run for his album ‘Twice As Tall’ on Apple Music’s charts in Nigeria. The project was streamed around 7.6 million times on Apple Music with more than 4 million of those streams for her breakout song ‘Damages’.
The way I see it Tems has a bright future among the many talented female artists coming out of Nigeria right now. There’s a reason her feature with Wizkid did so well and she deserves some of credit for that.
