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.
Freestyling — which she now records into her Voice Memos app, her inspiration gold mine where she keeps 10,000 singing clips and counting — would become the bedrock of her entire musical process. Now, at 30, it has seen her become one of the most singular voices to emerge from Nigeria in a generation, the first female artist from her country to chart in the US top 10, and has opened the doors to work with the greatest musicians of our time. These creative partnerships span a song with Beyoncé (Move from the Renaissance album in 2022), being sampled on Future’s Wait for U featuring Drake (2022) and writing Lift Me Up for Rihanna to sing in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which went on to earn an Academy Award nomination for best original song at the 95th Oscars. “Everything was perfect with that song — it was an honour,” she says of Rihanna.
Justin Bieber, who first praised Essence before joining its 2021 remix, later worked with her again on I Think You’re Special for Bieber’s 2025 album Swag II. “He’s so supportive. He sends me messages like, ‘God is with you today. You’re strong. Don’t doubt yourself.’ When I’m in LA, I’ll see him and Hailey [Bieber, his wife] — they’re both amazing people. I always take something away.” There is, she admits, still one name she dreams of. “I haven’t worked with Kendrick [Lamar] yet, but I remember meeting him and just being in awe,” she says. “I went to his show at the O2 — amazing, amazing, amazing.” Any plans? “I hope so. He’s definitely on my collaboration list.”
Tems by numbers
2 Grammy Awards, one in 2003 for WAIT FOR U and one in 2025 for Love Me Jeje
2.5 billion streams on Spotify. Tems earlier became the first female Nigerian artist to pass one billion streams
1 collaboration with rapper Dave. Their co-written single Raindance is tipped to be number one in the UK charts this weekend
2018 the year she quit her job and independently wrote, produced, recorded and released her debut song Mr Rebel
1 Oscar nomination for co-writing Lift Me Up from The Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack
2025 year Tems launched the leading vibe initiative aimed at empowering and mentoring young African women in the music industry
Right now, the success of Raindance, a romantic duo in which Tems repeats “I love you” to Dave, is all-eclipsing. Within only six days of its release, I tell her, its music video — filmed in Lagos, and featuring eye contact between the pair that appears so passionate and realistic rumours are swirling the pair are actually engaged — has clocked almost 10 million views on YouTube. “Wow,” she says, in genuine awe.
The pair first met at an LA after-party for the Grammys in 2021. “He was just one of those people that you feel like you know already,” she says. “We were all chatting, then we saw a piano, and he was playing the piano. I don’t even know how, but I started freestyling in the middle of a party, and everybody was like, ‘What is going on?’” she laughs. “Nobody complained.”
It’s the passion and emotional openness in both voice and lyrics cutting through the alt-R&B sound with touches of Afrobeats that the fans love, and what Tems is most proud of being able to produce.
“Me baring my soul? I don’t know any AI that can do that”
“I’ve been doing music for a while now, and I kind of felt like there might be a point where I wouldn’t be able to be vulnerable,” she says. “I notice that it happens a lot to artists, there’s just a point where a lot of artists can’t really tap into that raw emotion anymore.” Not her. “And I feel great about that — that I can still be honest with myself and be vulnerable in songs, and bare my soul.”
She is betting, with Love is a Kingdom, on human emotion triumphing over the AI slop that increasingly permeates her industry. “It was the perfect way to describe the journey that I’ve had so far, discovering myself and discovering love, and the lack of love, and self-love… and being confident in who I am, and grounded as a person,” she says. “Real music will always win,” she adds, with confidence. “Someone sent me a song today, and I came to find out it is AI. Am I going to go listen to that song again? No.” She doubles down. “If everybody in the world chooses AI music, I’m still going to be making music like I was before anybody knew me. I will continue,” she says. “Me baring my soul? I don’t know any AI that can do that.”
Such a sentiment does well to sum up my overarching impression of Tems, which is beginning to build — one of complete determination, and a splash of stubbornness which, it is fair to say, has paid off. As a young woman trying to break into the Nigerian music scene, having graduated from South Africa’s Monash university with a degree in economics and turning her back on a corporate job, she was laughed out of rooms as she tried to find a producer to work with.
The issue was that her style was more Céline Dion (“I just remember loving her and wanting to sing like that. I used to daydream of being on the edge of a cliff, singing that deeply”) than the popping Afrobeats scene which then ruled. “I’ve tried to change, but I can’t change. I remember thinking there’s nothing else I’m good at but this — and I didn’t work this far to turn back,” she says.
“People don’t really want to hear what you have to say until you’re ‘someone’ in the music space as a woman”
Out of necessity she taught herself to produce, but continued to face rejection. “I would [speak to men in the music industry] and say, ‘Hey, I produce too.’ They would look at me and say: ‘What? What are you producing? Who do you think you are? You think me and you are on the same level?’” It was upsetting, as she recalls desperately thinking: “It’s not that I’m trying to show you I’m big or anything. I genuinely want a good session. It’s about the music.
“A lot of the female artists I speak to, even now, say it’s the same thing. People don’t really want to hear what you have to say until you’re ‘someone’ in the music space as a woman. And that’s not surprising. It’s not unheard of.”
In July last year she founded The Leading Vibe Initiative (LVI) to tackle the problem, aiming to “support, connect and amplify the next generation of women in Africa. It’s a natural rite of passage for you to have those types of experiences. I’m not trying to stop them — I can’t, I’m not God. But if anybody has gone through that, you can come to me.”
It is something else Tems is trying to do differently. Rather than sound off on X or Instagram about the world’s wrongs, “I’m more of a ‘do something in real life’ kind of person,” she says. “I don’t like to do things for the approval of people. I don’t like to do things so people can say you are good. I want to do something because it’s the right thing to do, and it has to be physical for me.” It is the same with politics.
“I’m grateful we have access to people that can actually do something about political issues. And I would rather do that than be performative. I’m always behind the scenes thinking, talking to my managers: OK, what can we do? Who can we talk to?”
“Sometimes I have to remind people that I’m human. Because the more you talk about someone, or engage in conversations about people you don’t know, you pedestalise them, and start treating them like they’re not real,” she says. “I don’t want to be idolised, but if people idolise me, I can’t help it. It’s not really my business, so I treat it like that.”
Usually, she shields herself from the conversations altogether. “I throw my phone in a bag when I get home and I have a separate phone for emergencies — so if somebody really needs to reach me, they can call that phone. Usually I’m actually out here living life without a phone, and that helps me a lot.”
Based in west London, in a Thames-side property where she lives for five months out of the year (“I’ve made my house kind of cool, so I’m really indoors a lot — but I also shop at Camden Market sometimes”), she is a fashion darling of the capital — performing at the 2025 Fashion Awards at the Royal Albert Hall, attending Dior front rows in Paris, and is champion of UK design talent worldwide; she wore a custom navy gown by Ozwald Boateng, famously the first black tailor to open a shop on Savile Row, cut from richly textured ankara cloth nodding to her Nigerian roots at the Met Gala last year.
“If no one gave me an award, would I still be doing music? One hundred per cent”
Aside from music and fashion, and creating with others, she is “currently trying to diversify business-wise”, she says. One such way: when she became the first African woman to hold an ownership stake in a Major League Soccer club, by joining the ownership group of San Diego FC in February last year. “I’m actually really excited for the team,” she says, almost surprised with herself.
It would appear Tems is content with getting in the studio, and turning her off-the-cuff tunes, from chargers and cereal to battles of the heart, into music for the world to enjoy. But she wouldn’t stop if everyone turned their backs.
“I love music so much, and I’m really grateful that people recognise that — that people acknowledge that they love my music. I’m happy about that. But if no one gave me an award, would I still be doing music? One hundred per cent. If no one gave me an award, would I still love making music? Yeah, I would,” she says. “I wouldn’t stop for any reason.”
Tems is not going anywhere in a hurry.
Love is a Kingdom by Tems is out now
