Tems is singing to me. “I’m gonna bring the charger to you,” she riffs, in that signature, deep register. “I’m- gonna. Bring the charger… To yoo-ou.” You might not be surprised to hear that the singer-producer powerhouse — who counts two Grammy awards, a staggering 29.6 million monthly Spotify listeners, released a seven-song EP, Love is a Kingdom, in November out of the blue, and has a track, Raindance with rapper Dave from her surprise November EP Love is a Kingdom, on a safe-looking course to be this week’s UK No 1 — is not passing me a wire for an exhausted iPhone.
Instead, she is painting me a picture of Temilade Openiyi “before I was Tems” — before global attention arrived in 2020 thanks to the collaborative tune Essence, with fellow Nigerian artist Wizkid, “and just didn’t stop” — in the only way she knows how. See, from the age of eight, growing up in neighbourhoods in and around Lagos, Openiyi explains she simply could not stop singing. “I’d express everything in song. My mom would make cereal or sandwiches for my brother and I used to start singing at the table. If I asked my brother to bring me a charger, I would sing it. I found out later it was called freestyling,” she says.
