Tems Montreal Concert — Next Date & Ticket Alerts

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About Tems

Temilade Openiyi was born June 11, 1995 in Lagos, Nigeria, raised between Lagos and the United Kingdom in her early years, and returned to Lagos full-time as a teenager. The musical foundation was unusually broad for a Nigerian artist of her generation: church choir from childhood, classical piano lessons through her school years, and a Lagos adolescence absorbing the city's mix of gospel, R&B, Afro-pop, and the long shadow of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. She studied economics at Monash University South Africa in Johannesburg, returned to Lagos with a degree, took a marketing job at a multinational while writing songs in the evenings, and put out her first independent single 'Mr Rebel' in 2018. The early Lagos buzz built through 2019 around 'Try Me' — a self-produced track that turned into a slow-burn local hit and that established the vocal-and-production identity that would carry the rest of the career. The 2020 Wizkid feature on 'Essence', released on his Made In Lagos album, was the cycle-defining moment. The song's slow rise through 2020 and 2021, capped by the Justin Bieber remix and the Hot 100 entry, opened the US Afrobeats conversation at a scale no previous Nigerian record had managed. The 2020 EP For Broken Ears and the 2021 EP If Orange Was a Place followed the trajectory — short-form releases that read more like statements than full-length albums, with 'Damages', 'Found' (with Brent Faiyaz), and 'Crazy Tings' extending the catalogue. The Drake and Future feature 'Wait For U' in 2022 became her first US number one as a featured artist and won the Grammy for Best Melodic Rap Performance. 'Lift Me Up' with Rihanna later that year, co-written by Tems alongside Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Goransson, was nominated for the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for Best Original Song; the Beyonce 'Cozy' co-writing credit on Renaissance landed in the same window. Born In The Wild, released through RCA in June 2024, was her debut full-length studio album — a long-form record tracing gospel, alt-R&B, and Afro-fusion through a single artist's voice, with 'Love Me JeJe' (interpolating Seyi Sodimu's 1997 Nigerian classic), 'Burning', and 'Free Fall' as lead singles. The world tour built out of the album cycle has run across North America, the UK, Europe, Africa, and Australia, with the venue tier sitting in the upper-end theatre and mid-cap arena range. She is signed to RCA Records globally and runs her own imprint, Leading Vibe Records, in parallel.

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