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Tems discloses the musician who served as an inspiration for her musical career.
During an interview with renowned American rapper Kendrick Lamar, Nigerian award-winning artist Temilade Openiyi, known professionally as Tems, spoke openly about the artist who, when she was young, sparked her love of music.
The singer revealed that she had always enjoyed listening to the radio and that it was at this time that she first discovered the famed, multi-award-winning singer Celine Dion.
She said, “I was an extreme introvert when I was younger. I didn’t really talk much. My mom’s friends would be like, “Yo, Temi, come take a picture,” and I’d just turn around. I’m not sure when the first time I heard music was, but I found myself loving the radio, and I used to hear Celine Dion. Nigerians love Celine Dion. Her songs are very emotional, jump-off-a-cliff type songs.
They entered my soul. I think that’s where my love for music started. And then, when I was nine or ten, I started writing songs, but it wasn’t songs with choruses, it was just verses of things I was feeling. Then I fell into this deep hole of music obsession, and it was the only thing that made me feel alive. I can’t describe the feeling when I first got my first CD. It was a Destiny’s Child CD that was fake, it had 30 songs, and I learned them all. “
She continued by talking about how she began writing, producing, and arranging her own music. She admitted that this was a deliberate choice on her part because the majority of the producers she collaborated with at the time pushed her to stray and choose Afrobeats over her preferred genre.
This was an action that frustrated her and prompted her to make the decision to create her own music.
She said, “When I was in uni I only had songs on the piano and the guitar, I never entered the studio. We didn’t really have access to things like that back home, and I wanted something more. Like, “How do I go to the next level of musicality?” I asked a friend, and they were like, “You need a beat, I’ll get you this producer.”
Lots of producers I met back then, it was just Afrobeats, the main genre of Nigeria. Afrobeats is very good, but there’s a frequency I was trying to access that I wasn’t getting from them. The long and short is that I felt like I had to do it myself. Part of it also was, when you struggle to find people that believe in you, you go extra hard.“