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. “I had a show the night before, so on Friday I was just sleeping the whole day,” she says. 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. Another artist might have popped Champagne. Not Openiyi. She slept in, then went for a late lunch with her mom.
Forgive her for getting used to this sort of thing. Ever since “Essence” was released in 2020—a duet with Wizkid that reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and garnered Tems her first Grammy nomination—there’s been a series of Champagne-worthy incidents. Last year, a clip of Adele—a confessed Tems fan—singing Openiyi’s “Try Me” went viral on social media. “Free mind by tems has me in a fucking choke hold .. wow,” wrote SZA on Twitter. When Future sampled her song “Higher,” he made sure she had a featuring credit so his fans got to know her name. Having only released two EPs to date, the 27-year-old has already featured on tracks with Drake, Future, and Justin Bieber. The week before “Move” came out, Openiyi soundtracked the trailer for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and later appeared on Barack Obama’s summer playlist. All this before the release of her debut studio album. As Openiyi herself puts it on her 2021 EP, If Orange Was a Place: “Crazy tings are happening.”
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