Review: Slow burn, fast rise

Tems has made quite the mark on the music scene – and she’s not afraid to say so in her debut album.

Wilfred Okiche

Since her song-stealing appearance in Wizkid’s crossover hit Essence, 29-year-old Nigerian singer-songwriter-producer Tems (born Témìládè Openiyi) has been on the fast track.

With only two EPs to her name (2020’s For Broken Ears and 2021’s If Orange Was a Place), Tems scored a Grammy-winning hit after rapper Future sampled her song Higher on his song Wait for U.

She covered Bob Marley’s No Woman, No Cry for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack, wrote for Rihanna, Beyoncé and Drake, and was nominated for an Oscar.

Her debut album Born in the Wild arrives under the crushing weight of anticipation and Tems meets the moment like a pro, crafting a blistering record that seduces, inspires and enthrals, boldly expanding room for what is considered Afropop. Her sound embraces nineties R&B, rap, soul inflections, some dancehall vibes, and plenty of swagger delivered in her famously deep, velvet timbre.

She channels Lover’s Rock-era Sade one minute and Lauryn Hill the next. Tems can play for the pop charts and the DJ playlists as she does on the addictive Love Me Jeje, a reworking of a 1997 classic by Seyi Sodimu that screams song of the summer. The playful Wickedest lifts brilliantly from 1er Gaou, an enduring favourite from the Ivorian group Magic System. Turn Me Up harks back to the dancehall-lite roots of her earlier hit Damages and the Asake-assisted Get it Right appeals to younger audiences.

The album is most interesting when Tems veers into soulful territory as she does on Burning, which ruminates on the monster of fame, and on Unfortunate, a kiss-off to an ex-lover. But at 16 tracks, plus two extraneous interludes, Born in the Wild suffers pacing and editing issues that prevent it from achieving transcendence.