31st October, 2024
By Taiwo Okanlawon
Grammy-winning Nigerian singer, Temilade Openiyi, popularly known as Tems, has revealed that Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Drake reached out to her within three days in 2020.
The 29-year-old songstress spoke about her journey to stardom in a recent interview with BigBoy TV.
Tems said Beyoncé’s team reached out, followed by direct messages from Drake and Rihanna.
The Grammy winner described the experience as “surreal,” adding that it felt like “I was dreaming”.
“When I met Wizkid, I had only three songs. We recorded ‘Essence’ in 2019, it came out in 2020 and I released my EP during the pandemic,” she said.
“I didn’t imagine that I would become this big thing. We did ‘Essence’ and things started going off. I started getting messages. Beyoncé reached out in 2020 and my mind was blown. I was like God, what’s going on?
“Because I lived alone throughout the whole time I was in school and when I had a job, I was alone and I was really to my thoughts a lot.
“Beyoncé’s team reached out and I got DMs from people that I looked up to. Other artistes like Drake and Rihanna. These are people that influenced culture very much so for the past 10 years or more. These are people that are very respectable in the industry.
“I was in Nigeria when I got their messages. I was in my house alone when I got everything. In fact I got their messages within three days of each other.
“It felt like something crazy was happening, like it wasn’t real and I was dreaming. I felt like I was being pranked.”
Tems gained popularity in 2020, courtesy of her collaboration with Wizkid, the Afrobeats singer, on the song ‘Essence’.
The same year, she released her debut extended play (EP) titled ‘For Broken Ears’.
In 2022, Rihanna collaborated with Tems, who contributed to the writing of ‘Lift Me Up’, the celestial ballad for the ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ soundtrack.
Tems has received several awards and broken several records.
Last year, the songstress won her first-ever Grammy award for her role in ‘Wait for U’, the 2022 hit song by Future featuring Drake.
On June 7, Tems delivered debut album titled ‘Born In The Wild’, scheduled to be released on June 7.
In the 18-track album, Tems enlists Asake, the Afrobeats star, and J. Cole, the US rapper.
The tracks in the album consist of ‘Born In The Wild’, ‘Special Baby’, ‘Burning’, ‘Wickedest’, ‘Love Me Jeje’, ‘Get It Right’, ‘Ready’, and ‘Gangsta’.
Other tracks are ‘Unfortunate’, ‘Boy o Boy’, ‘Forever’, ‘Free Fall’, ‘Voices In My Head’, ‘Turn Me Up’, ‘Me & U’, ‘T-Unit’, ‘You In My Face’, and ‘Hold On’.
Tems had previously put out two songs off the album — ‘Me & U’ and ‘Love Me Jeje’.
The singer released her self-produced debut single ‘Mr Rebel’ in 2018 and then followed it with ‘Try Me’, her 2019 hit song.
Her song ‘Love Me Jeje’ recently made the summer playlist of Barack Obama, the former US president.
