By Edem Latsu Nukafu
Interview Magazine published a feature with Grammy award-winning crooner Tems on Tuesday, August 29, who sat down for a conversation with Kendrick Lamar in London back in June.
During the discussion, the Essence hit star unfurled up about a mixture of various topics, including how she got into music in the first place.
“I was an extreme introvert when I was younger. I didn’t really talk much. My mom’s friends would be like, ‘Yo, Temi, come take a picture,’ and I’d just turn around,” she admitted. “I’m not sure when the first time I heard the music was, but I found myself loving the radio, and I used to hear Celine Dion. Nigerians love Celine Dion. Her songs are very emotional, jump-off-a-cliff-type songs. They entered my soul. I think that’s where my love for music started.”
The Nigerian songster proceeded, “And then, when I was 9 or 10, I started writing songs, but it wasn’t songs with choruses, it was just verses of things I was feeling. Then I fell into this deep hole of music obsession, and it was the only thing that made me feel alive. I can’t describe the feeling when I first got my first CD. It was a Destiny’s Child CD that was fake; it had 30 songs, and I learned them all.”
At one juncture, Kendrick quizzed Tems about venturing into genres like R&B at a time when numerous people have tried to box her into styles interchangeable with her nationality and culture. “Everyone I asked for advice was like, ‘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 “Free Mind” singer explained to her Compton peer. “I’m okay with no one liking it, I just want to make this music. I want to make music that makes me pull my heart out, and if I can’t do that, I don’t want anything. I would rather do that and be broke than compromise.”
