Temilade Openiyi, better known by her stage name Tems and a Grammy winner, recently discussed her choice to go from the popular Afrobeats genre in Nigeria to R&B.
When Tems made this change, she said she was completely prepared to deal with serious repercussions. Because of her unfailing confidence in herself, she was unaffected by the prospect that she might not become well-known or influential in the R&B industry.
The singer of the popular song “Essence” said that her main goal in creating music was to spread a particular message.
In an interview with American rapper Kendrick Lamar that was published in the most recent issue of Interview Magazine, Tems talked about this topic.
Tems said, “I was prepared to die. I believed in myself so much that I didn’t really care if I never became anything or anyone. I just wanted to get a message out. I wanted to get my frequency out. And I was like, ‘Even if ten people hear this, it’s fine.’ But also along the way, I used to listen to a lot of Nigerian music and I wasn’t getting a lot of spiritual—I love Celine Dion, so, I love that intense feeling of, I’m about to jump off a cliff. That’s how I want my music to feel all the time, and Afrobeats wasn’t necessarily giving me that type of stimulation.”
She said everyone she asked for advice from back then, urged her to do afrobeats, saying, “The only way you can do this is Afrobeats. It’s not that your music is bad, it’s just that it doesn’t fit in Nigeria. Nigerians don’t like this.”
The singer, who received an Oscar nomination, expressed her determination to persist, highlighting that monetary gain wasn’t her primary objective. Instead, she emphasized that she is relentlessly pursuing a specific creative and emotional resonance, describing it as “chasing a frequency.”