Spotlight: Tems

The GRAMMY Museum is thrilled to welcome GRAMMY Award-winning Lagos, Nigeria-based singer, songwriter, and producer Tems to the Museum’s intimate 200-seat Clive Davis Theater for an evening moderated by Billboard’s Gail Mitchell discussing her debut album Born in the Wild, her career, and creative process, with a performance to follow.

Tems, born Témìládè Openiyi, never dreamt of fame. The GRAMMY-Award winning hitmaker simply wished to make a life doing what she loved most. 

“In my head I was going to create a nice little neosoul community. Every Friday, people would go to this club to see Tems,” she explains. “I didn’t prepare myself – I wish I had because then it wouldn’t have been so shocking. But how could I have known?”

Today, Tems has achieved global acclaim, earning Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, awards from the GRAMMYs, BET Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, and two Soul Train Music Awards. The Nigerian phenom boasts a list of collaborations with longstanding stars including Beyoncé, Future, Wizkid, Justin Bieber and Rihanna, her genre-melding rhythms and lyrics mesmerizing peers and fans alike. She was named on Time Magazine’s 100 Next list and recently honored with the Breakthrough Award at Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Awards. Tems also made a splash in the fashion world, as a first-time attendee during the 2023 Met Gala. “You know how they have pop stars?” she asks, “I see myself as a soul star.”

It’s hard to imagine the 28-year-old singer, songwriter and producer pursuing another path, but just about six years ago, Tems was sitting behind a desk, working for a digital marketing agency. It was a conventional trajectory more common in the world around her than music superstardom, but left her feeling empty. 

During weekends and late nights however, Tems stepped into a jazzy universe all her own. Honing a fascination with the anatomy of music that began at age 8, listening to rap, R&B and Celine Dion (“She’s a whole genre to Nigerians,” she says), Tems spent hours on YouTube, teaching herself production and audio engineering. Much of her musical pursuit began as insular, the singer initially wondering if she was simply meant to write songs in secret forever. But after a rather serendipitous encounter with a biblical scripture about taking a leap of faith, Tems dove headfirst and never looked back.

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Show Time: 7:30pm

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