Cross dj skin3/20/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() “What’s the name of the song?” she asked, humoring him. As she got into the car, the driver said, “Oh, my God, you remind me of that singer!” Minutes passed as he racked his brain without starting the engine. Love is something that fuels you to go harder.”Įarlier that morning she had been in a cab on the way to the Nigerian High Commission to renew her passport. Lust is-attraction is distracting, but love itself is enabling, encouraging. And not someone that distracts me, because love is not a distraction. It must be somebody that is completely grounded. “For me to not turn it away, it must be solid. Openiyi describes herself as, at her core, a “very romantic person” who is “zero or a hundred” in all aspects of her life. It doesn’t mean that people don’t hit on me.…” she says, rolling her eyes. “Yes, in that I don’t put myself out there for it to even be an option.” No, in that she is open to love. I haven’t had a romantic relationship since I released my first song.” Is that a choice? “Um, yes and no,” she says. “Firstly, I don’t have any romantic relationships. I ask if being on the road so much has affected her relationships. The last time Openiyi was in Lagos was to ring in the new year. There’s nobody that I was like, Oh, yes, she did this, so let me also go and do this.” Without other female artists from her hometown to follow in the footsteps of, she’s learning how to be a pop star from scratch. There are no blueprints I’m following,” she says. “A lot of the journey that I’ve been on, it’s very new. Eventually, the song reached someone who got her an interview slot on the radio, and after a while she started to get recognized both in Nigeria and abroad. Six months later, Openiyi wrote, produced, and released her debut single, “Mr Rebel.” It was a stripped-back DIY production, with no video. I ask if she thinks their response was cultural. “You quit your job to sing?” Openiyi says, impersonating them, with raised eyebrows. In 2018, she quit her job to pursue music full time. “I was like, I can’t live a lie anymore,” she says. After university, Openiyi moved back to Lagos and got herself an office job in digital marketing. Back then, she was just trying to process her own emotions, and to make the kind of music she wanted to hear. She wasn’t thinking about global success, or even a professional career. She wrote music in her spare time and taught herself how to make beats by watching YouTube videos. She joined a choir as a teenager, and, reluctantly, studied economics at the Monash South Africa university in Johannesburg. There’s nobody that I was like, Oh, yes, she did this, so let me also go and do this.” As Openiyi herself puts it on her 2021 EP, If Orange Was a Place: “Crazy tings are happening.” All this before the release of her debut studio album. The week before “Move” came out, Openiyi soundtracked the trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and later appeared on Barack Obama’s summer playlist. Having only released two EPs to date, the 27-year-old has already featured on tracks with Drake, Future, and Justin Bieber. When Future sampled her song “Higher,” he made sure she had a featuring credit so his fans got to know her name. “Free mind by tems has me in a fucking choke hold. Last year, a clip of Adele-a confessed Tems fan-singing Openiyi’s “Try Me” went viral on social media. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and garnered Tems her first Grammy nomination-there’s been a series of Champagne-worthy incidents. Ever since “Essence” was released in 2020-a duet with Wizkid that reached No. She slept in, then went for a late lunch with her mom.įorgive her for getting used to this sort of thing. Another artist might have popped Champagne. Openiyi had a guest vocal-in the standout track “Move” alongside Beyoncé and Grace Jones-on what would immediately become the biggest album of the year. “I had a show the night before, so on Friday I was just sleeping the whole day,” she says. On July 29, Temilade Openiyi-the Nigerian singer better known as Tems-was tucked up in bed in West London when Beyoncé’s album Renaissance dropped online.
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