SXSW London

On a Friday night in late February, Tems was having dinner with the owners of San Diego FC, celebrating her new position as a partner in the MLS club. The next day, a video went viral of the 29-year-old Nigerian musician, known for her enviable levels of cool, briefly losing it while watching the club’s first-ever home game, bitterly throwing her arms down when her team missed a free kick and repeatedly yelling, “What the f–k was that?” while clapping her hands to punctuate her every word. Then, on Sunday, she headed to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards, strutting the red carpet in a feathered gown at the Vanity Fair after-party and striking poses with the likes of H.E.R., Victoria Monét and Normani at Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s annual Gold Party. By Tuesday, Tems was overseas at Paris Fashion Week, serving classic elegance while sitting front row at the Courrèges and Dior shows.

Those prime seats offered her a rare opportunity: to be off her feet and catch her breath before hopping on a jet to her next high-profile affair. Because while Tems’ music has become known as the ideal soundtrack for unwinding and vibing out, she never really has time to do either.

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“Every day is something different, which is ­actually very exciting for me,” Tems insists during an early April afternoon in her home base of London, looking laid-back in a chic “groutfit” (monochromatic gray): oversize zip-up hoodie, tank maxi dress and black leather peep toe heels, her hair slicked back in a bun with laid edges. “I’m always like, ‘Hmm, I wonder how today is going to go. I wonder what’s going to happen.’ ” But even amid her whirlwind schedule, she manages to maintain some grounding daily rituals: “In the mornings, I always do my self-care. I pray and declare that everything is going to be good and whatever comes my way, I’ll be fine.”

Tems will headline THE STAGE at SXSW London on June 5 in an exclusive concert presented by Billboard at London’s iconic music venue Troxy.

That affirmative mindset has served her well. In 2020, Wizkid featured Tems on his summer anthem “Essence,” which hit the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 (partly due to a Justin Bieber remix); earned Tems her first Grammy Award nomination, for best global music performance; and played a pivotal role in ushering in the rise of Afrobeats in the United States. Five years later, the singer-songwriter-producer has become a ­global sensation in her own right, as well as a secret weapon for Western superstars. She collaborated with Drake on “Fountains” from his 2021 album, Certified Lover Boy, and the two appeared together the following year on Future’s Hot 100 No. 1 “Wait for U,” which samples Tems’ 2020 track “Higher,” from her debut EP, For Broken Ears, and earned Tems her first Grammy, for best melodic rap performance. That same year, she scored a feature on Beyoncé’s Renaissance and co-wrote Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up,” from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack; the song earned Golden Globe, Oscar and Grammy nods.

And since “Essence,” Tems’ distinguished solo releases have helped her remain at the forefront of African music. As “Wait for U” propelled “Higher,” For Broken Ears yielded another sleeper hit in 2022, “Free Mind,” which became her first solo Hot 100 entry (peaking at No. 46) and a radio fixture, spending 22 weeks at No. 1 on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and nine weeks atop Adult R&B Airplay. For Broken Ears has earned 853.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate — and “Free Mind” accounts for 434 million of them.

Her A-list assists and limited but impactful solo output built expectations for Tems’ first full-length, Born in the Wild, an 18-track opus that secured three Grammy nominations, including for best global music album, and peaked at No. 56 on the Billboard 200 following its release in June 2024 through RCA Records and Sony U.K. imprint Since ’93.

“Tems is such an important voice for our times, bringing the experience of her life and music to a global audience,” RCA chairman/CEO Peter Edge says. “It is so special that RCA has been able to partner with her on her journey.”

Ferragamo dress, Justine Clenquet earrings, Mi Manera ring.

Zoe McConnell

Tems didn’t have much faith in her chances at the Grammys, and she’d thus planned a swift exit. “I was convincing myself it’s probably not me anyway. I was like, ‘Let me just sit at the back. If they don’t call me, I’ll just quickly leave,’ ” she says. So when the album’s jovial hit single “Love Me JeJe” won best African music performance during the awards show’s premiere ceremony, she “had to run to the stage,” she recalls. But she says her real “prize” that evening was witnessing the joy of her plus-one, her mother, who later spotted a certain celebrity. “She saw Will Smith and she was like, ‘Will Smith, wow!’ ” Tems says, bursting into laughter. “He was sitting at a table and was like, ‘Hey, nice to meet you!’ He was talking to her. Just giving her that experience was amazing.”

She has given her mom plenty more reasons to be proud this year, with an awe-inspiring series of firsts: Not only is Tems the first Nigerian artist to win two Grammys, but she’s also the first African-born woman to be involved in MLS ownership and the first African female artist to hit 1 billion Spotify streams for a song, with “Wait for U.” Tems can hardly keep up with them all. When I ask her where she was when she found out about her recent Spotify accomplishment, she pauses before ­hesitantly admitting with a laugh, “It’s very possible that I’m just learning of this.” But she’s not taking any of her historic feats for granted: “It feels good to be able to do this on this scale. My life is a dream.”

She uses the same word in “Burning,” Born in the Wild’s other Grammy-nominated track, when describing the surreal trajectory of achieving and acclimating to her newfound fame. The extra eyeballs scrutinizing her made her feel especially “uncomfortable” in the beginning, she says, but they also proved how the tides have turned for African artists. Nigerian singer-songwriter Seyi Sodimu — who sings the 1997 Afro-soul classic “Love Me JeJe,” featuring Shaffy Bello, that Tems interpolated in her Grammy-winning song of the same name — said in a 2004 interview that he pitched the original record to multiple U.S. labels, only to be told it “was hard to market me because I look ‘American’ but I sound ‘African.’ ” Wale Davies, one of Tems’ managers who is also one-half of the Nigerian rap duo Show Dem Camp, says “it wasn’t cool to be African” back then.

But now, artists like Tems are rewriting that narrative while still honoring those who preceded them. Tems thanked Sodimu on X for clearing her song’s sample: “I’m glad that it’s getting its flowers today”; she also posted photos of them on the set of her self-directed “Love Me JeJe” music video, which features the two singing the bridge together.

“The responsibility an artist like Tems has is that you’re going to be the portal through which people see Africa,” Davies says. “We have to show them that you can operate at a global level.” As she declared when accepting the Breakthrough award at Billboard Women in Music in 2024: “I’m standing with a continent behind me.”

Despite growing up in the “hustle and bustle” of Lagos, the artist born Témìládè Openiyi prefers peace and quiet. Today, she calls her sacred silent time her “energy-saving mode.”

Tems didn’t speak until she was 3 years old and found music to be a more effective means of expression. As a kid, she fell in love with the sentimental balladry and powerhouse pipes of Céline Dion, Mariah Carey and the members of Destiny’s Child and says she aspired to create music with that same level of “soul and realness.” But she felt insecure about her deep natural voice and opted for a more delicate falsetto. The music teacher at her secondary school, Mr. Sosan, encouraged her raw, unfiltered talent and offered his music room as a safe space. But as she honed her craft, her mother had other plans: She wanted Tems to attend college.

“I tried to miss all the deadlines, [but] she enrolled me to school in South Africa last minute,” she recalls. While studying economics at IIE MSA in Johannesburg, Tems taught herself to produce and engineer her own music through YouTube tutorials. When she returned home upon graduation, she started a digital marketing job — but her real postgrad goals didn’t involve sitting behind a desk.

“It just got to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore… Spiritually, I was aware that this is not my path. It felt like life or death, like this can make or break your destiny and you need to make a decision right now,” Tems says. “And I chose to take that leap.”

Alexandre Vauthier coat.

Zoe McConnell

Tems figured once she was able to hand her mother her degree, “everyone should just leave me to be and let me do my music.” And her mom, whom Tems was caring for after she had broken her leg, gave her an extra push to pursue her true passion. “We were going through a lot at the time, and we needed that job. And she said, ‘I think you should go and chase your dreams and try this music thing. You can do it and I believe in you. Don’t worry about me. I’m here for you,’ ” she remembers with tears in her eyes. Tems quit in January 2018, and that July, she independently released her debut single, “Mr ­Rebel,” a buoyant, reflective track about standing firmly in her purpose.

“Immediately, I felt like, ‘I don’t know who this person is, but this person is singing for their life,’ ” Davies recalls of the first time he heard “Mr Rebel” soon after its release. It became an underground hit despite deviating from the feel-good, dance-driven Afrobeats popular at the time, which producers in Nigeria had always told Tems she needed to make if she ever hoped to succeed. But in the mid-2010s, the alternative alté movement was gaining popularity in the country, empowering a new generation of creatives to express themselves freely in their sound and style. “No one sounded like her. No one thought emotional, truthful, honest, no-filter music would work in Nigeria,” Davies says. And when Tems released “Try Me” in 2019, he continues, “everything changed. That song went crazy because so many people were like, ‘Ah, finally, a woman who can share our frustrations and say how we really feel.’ ”

“Try Me” and its gripping music video caught the attention of label executives from around the world, including Sarah Lorentzen, then an executive assistant at RCA (where she’s now an A&R executive) who was dedicated to “[supporting] music from back home” in Nigeria. She flew to London in October 2019 to meet Tems, who was slated to perform at Show Dem Camp’s Palmwine Festival (visa issues ultimately prevented Tems from appearing). Two months later, Lorentzen flew to Lagos for Tems’ In the Garden concert. “I just jumped in and started helping her build the stage, breaking palm leaves and sticking them in the stage,” she recalls. “We bonded throughout the night, and that was the start of a yearlong journey before she actually signed with RCA.”

Tems’ managers, Davies and Muyiwa Awoniyi, cite Lorentzen’s Nigerian heritage as a key factor in their decision to sign with RCA, as well as fellow Nigerian executive Tunji Balogun, then-executive vp of A&R at RCA (now Def Jam chairman/CEO), and his crucial work with the label’s Afrobeats and R&B acts. Before Lorentzen and Balogun signed Tems in 2021, they got her to hop on the Afrobeats remix of Khalid and Disclosure’s dance-pop track “Know Your Worth” alongside Davido, who had signed to RCA in 2016. Wizkid, who joined the label in 2017, invited Tems through Awoniyi to a recording session for his 2020 album, Made in Lagos. “[Awoniyi] called me and was like, ‘We’re at Wiz’s place, we just recorded two bangers.’ And one of them ended up being ‘Essence,’ ” Davies says.

The same weekend Tems and Wiz shot the “Essence” music video, she recorded “Me & U” with GuiltyBeatz during their first session together, in Ghana. Within a few weeks, they’d also made “Crazy Tings” and three other tracks that would appear on her first major-label EP, If Orange Was a Place. Music frequently flows out of Tems, who has recorded 7,000 voice memos worth of freestyled song ideas on her iPhone. (“I’ve saved every voice note I’ve ever had since 2016,” she adds.) But even as “Essence” blew up globally, Tems was already focused on what was ahead. “I’m so obsessed with the songs that I’ve not shared that I’m not even thinking about the outside world,” she says. “I’m more concerned with the creation of the art than the acknowledgment.”

Ferragamo dress, Christian Louboutin shoes, Justine Clenquet earrings, Mi Manera ring.

Zoe McConnell

Lorentzen believes Tems’ humble approach helps her make quality music that naturally resonates with fans. “When it comes from a pure place like that, a place without any specific intention to blow [Nigerian slang meaning “to be successful”] or for it to be a hit, it allows you to enter a different kind of flow state as an artist and really deliver what’s genuine and authentic and unique to you,” she says.

It helps that lightning also tends to strike right before she hits the booth. After a “lit night out” in London with her friends Dunsin Wright and Yvonne Onyanta, Tems took them back to the studio, where her producers Spax and GuiltyBeatz were making the beat for “Love Me JeJe.” Guilty says he and Spax initially didn’t have Sodimu’s hit in mind. “She walks in the studio and literally started singing, ‘Love me jeje, love me tender.’ We were like, ‘Yep, get on the mic and record this now,’ ” he recalls, adding that “Love Me JeJe” was the “easiest song” to make on Born in the Wild, taking under an hour to finish.

Kayla Jackson, then Tems’ project manager at RCA (and now marketing consultant), proposed debuting it during her set at the 2024 Coachella festival, where fans at the Mojave Tent instantly picked up on the nostalgic call-and-response track. For Guilty, the crowd’s reaction “reconfirmed what I believe — and that is whatever feeling you have while making music in the studio is going to translate to people.”

“Do you know this song?”

Tems is surveying the front row of New York’s Radio City Music Hall, searching for a lucky someone to serenade with a freestyle based off their name, as she did during every stop of the 2024 Born in the Wild world tour. Her security guard lifts a 9-year-old girl, coincidentally named Africa, onto the stage as “Found,” the Brent Faiyaz-featuring track from If Orange Was a Place, starts playing. Tems asks her a couple of times if she knows this song before she shyly nods her head and proceeds to surprise the singer — and 6,000 concertgoers — by not missing a single lyric.

“Everybody erupted,” Joe Harris, her agent at CAA, remembers from that night. “In that moment, I realized this woman has not only been able to touch people her age and older, but the youth of the world has fallen in love with her voice and her tone.”

And her team has made sure her voice can travel to as many corners of the planet as possible, especially on her native continent. When Tems originally announced her 31-date international tour last May, she had two unspecified African stops scheduled. Awoniyi says it’s difficult to find the right venues that will “match the standard” of the kind of show she wants to deliver, and Harris adds, “It takes a bit of groundwork to try to pull those shows ­together because of the infrastructure and politically whatever’s going on in each one of those different countries.” In January, after receiving backlash online for promoting her show in Kigali, Rwanda, that was scheduled for March, Tems canceled it due to the country’s ongoing conflict with the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I never ever intend to be insensitive to real-world issues, and I sincerely apologize if this came across that way,” she wrote on X.

But aside from occasional roadblocks, she has also secured major opportunities in Africa. In March, Tems became the first artist to perform at The Dome, the new, 10,500-capacity venue in Johannesburg that Live Nation launched with Stadium Management South Africa and Gearhouse South Africa earlier this year. “We’re always looking to create epic moments,” Awoniyi says. “Live Nation let us know about the venue that they were building. Our agents spoke to them, and because we are very moments-focused, for her to be the first artist to perform there is cool.” Her team is carefully planning on rescheduling her show in Rwanda while adding new stops in Kenya, Ghana and, of course, Nigeria.

Bringing the fruits of her success back home remains fundamental to Tems’ mission. Pave Investments — an African private investment firm that backs platforms creating opportunities to develop and support African talent globally, such as Tems’ company, The Leading Vibe — reached out to her camp with the opportunity to join the San Diego FC ownership group. “I grew up around my uncles and brother watching matches, and because they’re so loud, I’m forced to pay attention. I always wondered about being able to be in the business of it because it’s a man’s world,” Tems says. In her role, she’ll work closely with the Right To Dream Academy, a youth association football academy that started in Ghana and has since expanded with branches in Egypt, Denmark and the United States. “That’s something that piqued my interest, being able to build other Africans up, build other children up and give them more opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise seen,” Tems says.

Marc Jacobs jacket and shoes, Calzedonia tights, Jacquemus earrings.

Zoe McConnell

Her historic entrance into the sports realm aligns with the ethos of The Leading Vibe, which she established in 2020 and where she serves as a director. Named for a lyric from “Mr Rebel” — “I’m the crown, I’m the vibe, I’m the leading vibe” — it allows her to “[lead] by example” and make a “difference in the world” by holding and managing her assets (she fully owns her masters for For Broken Ears and co-owns the masters for If Orange Was a Place and Born in the Wild) while serving as an incubator for investment, philanthropy and new business ventures. Through The Leading Vibe, she’s working on an initiative to support young African female artists, songwriters and producers.

“The way her brand is constructed is not limiting. You can see her at a football match today, you can see her at Formula 1 tomorrow,” Awoniyi says. In February, Aston Martin reported that 15,000 people watched her perform “Higher” at the unveiling of its new car design for the 2025 F1 season at London’s O2 Arena. She’s yet to headline her own show at the famed venue, but Awoniyi says they “haven’t been trying to rush” her growth as an artist to ensure the longevity of her career.

Tems says she’s currently making music “that I’m really excited about that sounds nothing like Born in the Wild,” and that after contributing to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack, she wants to hear more of her music in film — maybe even in the form of an original score — and possibly get in front of the camera. But while her universe may be continually expanding, Tems still wants her impact on the world to be fulfilling.

“My 20s, they’ve been eventful. I’ve gotten used to the uncertainty,” says Tems, who turns 30 in June. “I hope it stays that way. I hope it doesn’t slow down.”

This story appears in the May 17, 2025, issue of Billboard.