Grammy award-winning Nigerian singer and songwriter Temilade Openiyi, popularly known as has Tems opens up on the challenges that comes with being well-known and successful, as she explains why she switched from Afrobeats to RnB.
The talented singer spoke on while discussing with American superstar rap artist, Kendrick Lamar, as published in the latest volume of Interview Magazine.
Tems said that being successful usually comes with its pressures and challenges, but she tries to handle them by simply being herself.
She said:
“When you become more known or seen, it’s very easy to get caught up in, “What do people expect of me now?” But for me, it’s like, “What do I expect of myself now?” Because you’re the one that has to live with yourself, the one that has to sleep with the decisions that you make. Trusting yourself is so key, and I’m not going to stop trusting my guts just because people can see me now. It’s like being in a zoo. The animals don’t change their behaviour just because you’re looking at them. They’re always going to be who they are. So why should I change?”
Speaking on her her passion for the R n B genre and how she had ditched Afrobeats for it.
According to the ‘Free mind’ hitmaker, all she wanted to do with the R&B genre was to get a message out.
She 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 revealed that everyone she had sought advice from about her chosen career path advised her to do Afrobeats instead, but she refused to give up since making money wasn’t her primary objective.
“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.”
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