Tems rises from choir roots to global acclaim

Temilade Openiyi, known professionally as Tems, is a Nigerian singer-songwriter whose career has widened the global appeal of Afrobeats. She began in church and school choirs, developed an intimate vocal language between Lagos and Accra, and moved from ensemble singing to commanding festival stages and recording rooms. Her first Grammy arrived in 2021, followed by a second in 2025.

Her story matters because she did not manufacture a persona around the breakthrough. The Nigerian singer-songwriter kept the hesitant warmth of her early recordings as her audience grew, while adding sharper songwriting, freer collaboration and a confident stage presence. For listeners in Australia, that combination makes Tems both an accessible entry point into African pop and a serious artist with a distinctive voice.

Roots in worship and West African rhythm

Tems was born on 11 July 1995 in Lagos to a Nigerian father and Ghanaian mother. The family spent time in both countries, and Accra became as important to her formation as Lagos. Ghanaian highlife surrounded her early life with often guitar-led melodies, layered percussion and direct social storytelling. This exposure helped place her eventual Afropop style within a wider West African musical inheritance.

Church was another centre of her education. She sang in a choir as a child, learned to listen for harmony and follow a conductor, and treated devotional music as a practical lesson in breath and ensemble work. Gospel music resources offer a useful window into the collective forms surrounding that training. Church gave her a collaborative model for later work: worship became part of the emotional architecture of her own songs rather than a label placed over them.

Her voice also carries the intimacy of bedroom recordings without sounding slight. A low, conversational register sits beside restrained melodic runs, and both can turn a spare arrangement into a crowded emotional scene. Tems has described church, soul and highlife as parts of her musical world; each rewards attention to the space between notes as much as the notes themselves.

The intimate song that broke through

Her decisive break came with “Me & U”, released in 2013 and produced by L.A.X. The song’s plain-spoken account of romantic uncertainty felt instantly familiar, while the minimal arrangement left room for Tems to move between chest voice and airy falsetto. Rather than arrive with a manufactured hit machine around her, she placed a distinct voice at the centre of the record.

That fusion also makes sense beside the broader history of highlife music. West African pop has long combined percussion, melodic phrasing and social observation, and Tems absorbed that environment in Accra. Her Nigerian instincts add a looser conversational flow, giving the groove intimacy while preserving its pulse.

“Higher”, her 2015 collaboration with Korede Bello, widened the frame, while “Ready” and “Tender” sharpened the emotional vocabulary. The 2019 debut album Born in the Wild gathered these developments into a coherent world of love, self-questioning and guarded hope. The sequencing made the early singles feel less like disposable steps and more like chapters in one evolving artistic argument.

From acclaim to global recognition

At the 2020 Grammys, Tems received two nominations: Best African Music Performance for “Me & U” and Best Song Written for Visual Media for “Ready”. Her first victory came at the following ceremony, in March 2021, when “Me & U” won Best African Music Performance. For an artist who had begun in the choir, the award demonstrated how far her economical arrangements could travel.

“Essence”, her 2020 collaboration with Burna Boy, carried that reach even further. Its unhurried beat, close vocal exchanges and candid depiction of intimacy made it useful everywhere from bedroom playlists to club sets, and it was nominated for Best Global Music Performance. Tems also contributed vocals and songwriting to Drake’s “Fountains”, showing that her melodic instincts could sit inside a different sonic architecture.

Her second Grammy arrived in 2025 for “Love Me JeJe (Remix)”, featuring Taylor Swift. The song’s sample of “Pot Calling the Kettle Black” placed a playful, self-assured Tems beside one of pop’s most recognisable voices. Winning Best African Music Performance again underlined the hybrid nature of her career: gospel roots, African pop instincts, alternative R&B detail and pop spectacle all remain audible at once.

The craft behind Tems’ understated style

The craft is easiest to hear in Tems’ phrasing. She often begins close to speech, then bends a phrase into melody with long vowels, subtle runs and sudden shifts of register. Producers leave pockets of air around her voice, and layered harmonies can suggest a choir without overpowering the lead. It is a style built on control, yet live performances allow its edges to fray in an expressive way.

Her writing follows the same economy. A song such as “Tender” can hold desire, doubt and resignation in a small number of memorable lines, while Born in the Wild lets strings, bass and restrained percussion move at the pace of the words. Tems often co-writes, yet her melodic fingerprints remain clear: repeated motifs, deceptive pauses and harmonies that resolve with emotional rather than mathematical neatness.

Collaboration has expanded that palette without making her sound interchangeable. Burna Boy leaves space for call-and-response on “Essence”; Swift brings a new rhythmic counterweight to “Love Me JeJe”; and Tems’ feature on Drake’s “Fountains” turns her vocal texture into part of a nocturnal rap record. Her live sets, built around minimal arrangements and close vocal interplay, let audiences hear those choices in human time rather than through polished sequencing.

Tems in the Australian music landscape

For Australian listeners, Tems moves through familiar channels: Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, ARIA reporting, commercial and community radio, and the intimate live-music rooms found across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other cities. The scale differs from Nigeria’s enormous domestic audience, but the appetite for Afrobeats, neo-soul and globally connected R&B is increasingly visible.

Her sound also fits several everyday Australian settings:

• Small stages around Sydney’s Newtown and Redfern, and Melbourne’s Brunswick and Collingwood, give her restrained vocal arrangements room to develop in close quarters.
• Her music fits headphone listening on trains and trams, focused gym sessions, café playlists and the relaxed soundtrack of a Sunday barbecue.
• Afrobeats and adjacent African sounds have gained visibility on festival circuits such as Brisbane’s BIG SOUND, Sydney’s Splendour in the Grass and Melbourne’s Southbound.

The local market and legal environment add another layer:

• ARIA’s Australian charts, Triple J’s national reach and community stations offer several routes for a global release to build a domestic audience.
• Australian classification rules under federal and state or territory laws, including the Classification Act 1995 in several jurisdictions, combine with platform advisories to flag explicit language.
• The Copyright Act 1968 protects sound recordings, while performer-protection provisions address unauthorised commercial use of performances and broadcasts.

That context helps explain why Tems can feel both immediate and cosmopolitan in Australia. The choir discipline of her youth, the highlife colour of her Ghanaian years and the polished international networks around her work are audible in the same voice. For listeners who move between local festivals, urban radio and home streaming, that musical hybridity is not a barrier; it is the attraction.