/ 20 July 2024

Tems’ debut album Born in the Wild is a blistering, genre-defying masterpiece

Tems Insta
Tems/Instagram

Tems has made quite the mark on the music scene — and she’s not afraid to say so in her debut album. Since her song-stealing appearance in Wizkid’s crossover hit Essence, the 29-year-old Nigerian singer-songwriter and 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 American rapper Future sampled her song Higher on his song Wait for U

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

Her 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 deep, velvet timbre. 

She channels Lovers Rock-era Sade one minute and conscious rapper 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 fame, and on Unfortunate, a kiss-off to an ex-lover. But, at 16 tracks, plus two extraneous interludes, Born in the Wild suffers from pacing and editing issues that prevent it from achieving transcendence.

— The Continent