Nigerian music star, Tems has made an interesting disclosure about why she started recording music and who her competitors are in the industry.
Known for her trending single, Me & You, the young talent, who submitted excerpts of the podcast available online, stated that she is original and remains “true” to herself.
The Free Mind singer explained she was not making music to win awards, and she was not competing with any artiste.
She considers music as an “outlet” to express her thoughts, adding that her craft is for people who can relate to the melodies.
“I am competitive within myself, but I am not competing with other artistes; nobody can compete with me,” she said, giggling. “I am an original; I birth children, but also I’m just all about being true to myself.”
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“My music is for people that relate to it. My music is coming from me; so my music is my outlet,” she noted.
The singer and songwriter, whose work includes a beautiful cover of Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry, used in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, intimated that she started making music because she did not have friends and “needed something to say.”
“I had something to say and I didn’t have anyone to say it to so I just sing it. I’ll write it in a song, sing it and record it on my phone and I was doing that for years. So music is my outlet.”
The 28-year-old is, however, not bothered about her recording “do well” or not. All she wants to do is release songs.
“Whether anyone listens to it [my music] or not, I have to release it; whether it does well, or it doesn’t do well, it’s none of my business,” the Essence singer said.
“I need to release it, and it’s for the people that can connect with it without going through the same things,” she noted.
Tems, born Temilade Openiyi, further indicated that her ambition was beyond Oscar nominations and that she had never “imagined” receiving all the accolades she had earned so far.
“All the accolades that have happened I wasn’t ever imagining, oh my goodness one day I want to win an award. It wasn’t even on my brain. It wasn’t a dream of mine.
“My dream was literally to sit down somewhere and and sing to people in a lounge, to have a residence somewhere, and if they said we want you to go to Las Vegas and sing for people that would have been my craziest dream.”
“I dont really think about accolade, I just want to get my music out before I die and that’s what is important,” she stressed.
The female MVP Award holder rose to fame after she was featured on Wizkid’s 2020 single, Essence, which reached No.9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart following the release of the remix version with Justin Bieber.
The song earned her a Grammy nomination. That same year, she was featured on the song Fountains by Drake.