Temilade Openiyi aka Tems has become the first female Nigerian artiste to win a Grammy award.
Tem won the ‘Best Melodic Rap Performance’ category on Sunday night for her role in ‘Wait for U’, the 2022 hit song by Future also featuring Drake.Here are things to know about Tems:
2. She is 27-year-old.
3. In 2018, Tems quit her job to pursue a career in music.
4. She began to learn self-production skills on YouTube and on 18 July 2018, she released her debut single, “Mr Rebel”, a song which she produced by herself.
5. On August 7, 2019, she released the single “Try Me”.
6. In 2020, DJ Edu chose her as one of “ten artists to watch” that year.
7. On April 23, 2020, Tems was featured alongside fellow Nigerian singer Davido on a reworked version of American singer-songwriter Khalid and English electronic music duo Disclosure’s single, “Know Your Worth”.
8. She rose to prominence after she was featured on Wizkid’s 2020 single “Essence,” which reached the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100.
9. The remixed version of Essence with Justin Bieber earned her a Grammy Award nomination.
10. She was featured on Drake’s song, “Fountains.”
11. On September 25, 2020, she released her debut extended play, For Broken Ears.
12. In 2021, Tems released her second extended play, If Orange Was a Place (2021), after being signed to RCA Records.
13. In 2022, Tems’ vocals from her song “Higher” were sampled by Future on his single, “Wait for U”, which led to her being credited as a featured artist alongside Drake on the song.
14. The song debuted atop the Billboard Hot 100, making her the first female African artist to debut at number one and the second Nigerian artist to top the chart.
15. The song earned her the Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance.
16. Tems covered Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack, released in July 2022.
17. In the same month July, her song “Free Mind” from her debut EP debuted on the Hot 100.
18. She co-wrote the song “Lift Me Up” by Rihanna, which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.
19. On 14 December 2020, Tems was arrested alongside fellow Nigerian singer Omah Lay after they performed in a show in Uganda.The Ugandan police authority identified violation of COVID-19 lockdown protocols as the reason for their arrests, but the two artists felt they were set up. Two days later, the Ugandan government released them, apologised for the arrests, and dropped the charges.
20. Throughout her career, Tems has received many accolades, including a Grammy Award, two NAACP Image Awards, two BET Awards and two Soul Train Music Awards.