Tems Biography: Age, Real Name, Net Worth 2026, Two Grammy Awards, the Oscar Nomination, and How Temilade Openiyi Became Africa’s Most Decorated Female Artist

She once said that her voice was “too loud and ugly.” She said it the way people say things they genuinely believe — not with false modesty, but with the flat, painful certainty of someone who has been told something often enough that the words start to feel like facts. She was a teenager in Lagos, with a voice that nobody around her seemed to know what to do with. It was too big, too raw, too strange for the contexts she was being asked to perform in. So she stopped trying to fit it into those contexts. She went into her bedroom, taught herself music production on a borrowed laptop, and began building a sound that was designed entirely around what her voice actually was — not what she had been told it should be.

The result was “Mr Rebel” — a debut single she produced entirely herself, released independently in 2018, that stopped Nigerian music in its tracks and announced a voice and an artistic vision that the industry genuinely had not heard before. Within two years, that voice was on the most talked-about song in the world. Within three years, it had won a Grammy. Within four, it had earned an Oscar nomination. Within five, it had won a second Grammy. And by 2026, Temilade Openiyi — known globally as Tems — had become the most decorated female artist in Nigerian music history, the first African female artist with seven Billboard Hot 100 entries, and one of the most important creative voices in global music regardless of geography, genre, or gender.

This is her full story.

Tems Biography Facts at a Glance

Early Life: Lagos, London, and the Voice Nobody Knew What to Do With

Temilade Openiyi was born on June 11, 1995, in Lagos State, Nigeria. Her name — Temilade, spelled Témìládè in Yoruba orthography — means “the crown is mine” or “mine is the crown”: a declaration of entitlement to greatness that her mother gave her at birth and that her career has spent the better part of a decade vindicating.

Her background is mixed in a way that is both unusual and formative. Her mother is Nigerian — Yoruba — while her father is British-Nigerian. Shortly after her birth, the family relocated to the United Kingdom, where Tems spent her earliest years. Her parents separated when she was approximately five years old, after which her mother returned to Nigeria with Tems and her older brother Tunji Paul, initially settling in Ilupeju on the Lagos mainland before relocating over the years to Lekki and then Ajah on Lagos Island.

Growing up with a single mother in Lagos gave her life a texture of quiet resilience that runs through her music as a consistent emotional undercurrent. She and her brother were close — they would sing together, create songs, and perform for each other in the way that musically gifted siblings do, each one sharpening the other’s instincts through the intimacy of shared creative exploration. That early musical partnership with Tunji Paul was the foundation on which everything else was built.

Her school years were not uniformly happy. At Dowen College in Lekki — where she completed her secondary education — she experienced bullying from peers who mocked her voice. The irony is almost too neat: the voice that would eventually win two Grammy Awards and earn an Oscar nomination was the same voice that drew ridicule in a Lagos secondary school. But even in those years, the voice was finding its advocates. A music teacher at the school recognised her talent and taught her to play the piano — an intervention that gave her a technical foundation she would later use to teach herself music production.

By the time she was fifteen, she had made a decision that she has described as one of the most consequential of her creative life: she stopped listening to other artists. Not permanently and not out of arrogance, but deliberately — as a way of clearing enough internal space to discover what her own sound actually was, without the interference of other people’s influences nudging her in directions that were not authentically hers. That discipline, unusual in a teenager, is one of the clearest early signals of the artistic seriousness that has defined her career.

After secondary school, she relocated to Johannesburg, South Africa to attend Monash South Africa University — a campus of the Australian Monash University — where she studied and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics. The degree gave her an analytical framework that, combined with her self-taught production skills and her obsessive attention to sound, created an artist who approaches her music with both creative instinct and intellectual rigour.

The Self-Taught Producer: Learning to Build Her Own World

The most remarkable technical fact about Tems is one that even many of her fans do not fully appreciate: she is a self-taught music producer. She did not have a mentor who walked her through a DAW. She did not go to music production school. She sat down with a laptop and music production software and figured it out — driven by the conviction that if she was going to create music that sounded like what she heard in her imagination, she would need to build it herself rather than depend on producers who did not understand her vision.

Her debut single, “Mr Rebel,” released in 2018, was produced entirely by her. The track — built on sparse, moody production that felt immediately distinctive in a Nigerian music landscape dominated by busy, percussion-heavy Afrobeats arrangements — introduced a sound that existed at the intersection of Afrobeats, R&B, and the alternative movement known as Alté. It was not an immediate mainstream smash; it was something quieter and ultimately more significant: a statement of artistic identity so clear and so complete that the people who heard it knew exactly who this artist was and what she was trying to do.

She released the follow-up single “Try Me” — which expanded her Nigerian following substantially and confirmed that “Mr Rebel” was not a lucky first attempt but the opening of a coherent artistic project. She released these records through her own label, The Leading Vibe, maintaining full creative and commercial control at the outset of her career in a way that would later give her significant leverage in negotiations with major labels.

For Broken Ears: The EP That Changed Everything

In September 2020, Tems released her debut EP: For Broken Ears — a six-track project that crystallised her artistic identity and demonstrated a depth of songwriting and production sophistication that was entirely unexpected from an independent artist at this stage of her career. The EP included the singles “Damages” and “Free Mind” — the latter becoming one of the most widely shared and streamed Nigerian records of 2020, a song whose haunting production and emotionally raw vocal performance connected with listeners across the world who had never previously engaged with Nigerian music.

“Free Mind” announced Tems to an international audience in a way that “Mr Rebel” had not. It charted in multiple countries, was played by international DJs and tastemakers, and brought her to the attention of a global music industry that immediately recognised something genuinely special. The song has since accumulated hundreds of millions of streams and remains one of the most celebrated songs in the recent history of Nigerian music.

But even as For Broken Ears was opening doors worldwide, Tems found herself facing a crisis that threatened to derail everything. In December 2020, she was arrested in Uganda alongside fellow Nigerian artist Omah Lay after performing at an event that violated COVID-19 restrictions then in force in the country. Both artists were detained for several days before being released — an experience that Tems has addressed publicly with characteristic composure, refusing to allow it to define the narrative of her career or diminish the artistic momentum she had been building.

“Essence”: The Song That Introduced Her to the World

In 2020, Wizkid featured Tems on his Made in Lagos album track “Essence” — a collaboration that would become the most significant moment in both artists’ careers to that point, and one of the most consequential events in the history of Nigerian music’s global expansion.

“Essence” became the first Nigerian song to feature on the Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number one on US urban radio. It was certified platinum in multiple countries, spent months on international charts, and introduced Tems — and Wizkid — to an audience of hundreds of millions of people globally who experienced the song as the most irresistible piece of music they had heard in years. The song earned a Grammy nomination for Best Global Music Performance at the 64th Grammy Awards — the first Grammy nomination for either artist for a collaborative Nigerian record.

The “Essence” moment did not merely advance Tems’ career. It transformed it entirely. Within months of the song’s global breakthrough, she was receiving feature requests from some of the biggest names in international music, her streaming numbers had multiplied, and the music industry’s major labels — who had been watching from a respectful distance — began making serious approaches.

In September 2021, she signed to RCA Records in a partnership with Since ’93 — a deal that gave her global major label distribution while preserving significant creative control through her Leading Vibe imprint. The signing was a validation of everything she had built independently, and it gave her the infrastructure to compete for the kind of international commercial milestones that had previously been accessible only to a handful of African artists.

If Orange Was a Place and “Free Mind”: Cementing Her Own Sound

In September 2021, she released her second EP: If Orange Was a Place — a five-track project that deepened her artistic signature and produced further fan favourites. The EP included collaborations and demonstrated her continued evolution as both a vocalist and a producer, refining the Afrobeats-R&B-Alté fusion that had become her sonic territory.

The same year, her collaboration with Future and Drake on “Wait For U” was confirmed — a track that would be released in 2022 and would prove to be the most commercially successful single of her career to that point, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and generating the Grammy nomination that would ultimately become her first Grammy win.

The Grammy, The Oscars and the Hollywood Breakthrough

On February 5, 2023, at the 65th Grammy Awards, Tems made history. Her collaboration with Future and Drake on “Wait For U” won the Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance — making her the first female Nigerian artist to win a Grammy Award, and the first Nigerian artist to win multiple Grammys (counting Wizkid’s 2021 win for “Brown Skin Girl”). She accepted the award on behalf of herself and her collaborators with the quiet dignity of someone who had always known this moment would come, even when nobody else was sure.

But the Grammy was not the only piece of global recognition she received that season. She had co-written “Lift Me Up” — a tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman, performed by Rihanna for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. The song, co-written by Tems alongside Rihanna, Ludwig Göransson, and director Ryan Coogler, was nominated for Best Original Song at the 95th Academy Awards (Oscars) in 2023 — making Tems the first Nigerian to be nominated for an Academy Award and one of the very few African songwriters to have received that recognition. Rihanna performed “Lift Me Up” at the 2023 Oscars ceremony.

The song also received nominations at the Golden Globe Awards and the Critics’ Choice Awards — placing Tems at the intersection of the music and film industries in a way that no Nigerian artist had previously achieved. That she accomplished it not as a performer but as a songwriter — the person who put the words and melody in Rihanna’s mouth — spoke volumes about the depth of her creative talent beyond the vocal performance that most fans associate with her.

In the same period, she contributed “No Woman No Cry” to the Wakanda Forever soundtrack — a reimagining of Bob Marley’s classic that further demonstrated her ability to inhabit and reinvent musical traditions far beyond the Afrobeats genre she is most closely associated with. She also appeared on Beyoncé’s Renaissance album on the track “Move” — a second high-profile Beyoncé collaboration that confirmed the esteem in which the American superstar held her.

Born in the Wild: The Debut Album She Built Over Years

On June 7, 2024, Tems released her long-awaited debut studio album: Born in the Wild — through RCA Records and Since ’93. The album was received with strong international chart performance and critical acclaim that confirmed everything her EPs, features, and collaborations had promised.

The 18-track project featured collaborations with Asake (“Get It Right”) and J. Cole (“Free Fall”) — two of the most respected names in their respective genres — alongside a tracklist of largely self-produced and co-produced tracks that demonstrated her mastery of multiple musical textures. Lead singles included “Me & U” (October 2023), “Love Me JeJe” (April 2024) — which interpolated Nigerian singer Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 classic of the same name, produced by GuiltyBeatz and Spax — and “Burning” (June 2024), co-written and co-produced by Tems herself alongside GuiltyBeatz.

She previewed the album at Coachella 2024 — one of the world’s most prestigious music festivals — performing “Love Me JeJe” live before its official release. Her Coachella appearance, in April 2024, was a statement of international status: the girl from Lekki with the “too loud and ugly” voice, headlining one of America’s biggest cultural stages.

Born in the Wild arrived to global acclaim in 2024, followed by the EP Love Is a Kingdom in 2025. The album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Global Music Album at the 67th Grammy Awards, and the track “Burning” received a nomination for Best R&B Song at the same ceremony — a recognition of the album’s crossover quality across multiple Grammy categories simultaneously.

The Second Grammy: “Love Me JeJe” and History Made Again

At the 67th Grammy Awards in 2025, Tems won her second Grammy Award — for Best African Music Performance for “Love Me JeJe.” The win made her the first Nigerian artist to win multiple Grammy Awards — a record that places her alongside the most decorated Nigerian musicians in Grammy history, with two individual wins to her name at age thirty.

The “Love Me JeJe” Grammy win was particularly meaningful in the Nigerian context because the song itself is a tribute to Nigerian musical heritage — its interpolation of Seyi Sodimu’s beloved 1997 original made it an act of conscious cultural remembering dressed in contemporary production. Winning a Grammy for a song that so explicitly honoured a Nigerian musical ancestor was a poetic full circle.

Raindance with Dave and the 2026 Chapter

In early 2026, Tems released “Raindance” — a collaboration with UK rapper Dave (David Orobosa Michael Omoregie), featured on Dave’s 2025 album The Boy Who Played the Harp. The single debuted on the UK Singles Chart at number one — making it one of the highest-charting entries of her career on the British chart. The Dave collaboration also sparked significant public speculation about a possible romantic relationship between the two artists, fuelled by their joint appearances at public events including the 2025 Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix. Neither artist has publicly confirmed any romantic involvement.

The Love Is a Kingdom EP, released in 2025, further expanded her catalogue with new material that demonstrated continued artistic evolution — adding a third body of work to her EP catalogue as she developed the creative universe that would inform her next major studio project.

What Makes Tems Unique: The Voice, the Production, the Vision

To understand Tems’ exceptional standing in contemporary music, it helps to understand how rare the combination of attributes she possesses actually is. She is simultaneously a vocalist of extraordinary emotional range, a self-taught music producer capable of creating complete sonic worlds, and a songwriter whose pen has produced music for both herself and the biggest artists in the world — including Rihanna and Beyoncé.

Most artists have one of these gifts. A handful have two. Tems has all three — and she developed them largely in isolation, without formal training in production or songwriting, driven entirely by the conviction that what she heard in her imagination was worth the effort required to bring it into the world.

Her voice is the most immediately distinctive element — the quality that drew the bullies in school and drew the Grammy committee to her name. It is a contralto instrument, unusually low and rich for a Nigerian female artist in a musical culture that has historically favoured higher, brighter vocal timbres. It carries sadness and defiance simultaneously. It sounds ancient in the best possible way — like music that has been felt rather than constructed.

Her production sensibility is minimalist in a way that is deeply unfashionable in an era of maximalist pop production, and that unfashionableness is precisely its power. By stripping back the arrangement to let her voice do the work that most producers cover with layers of sound, she creates a vulnerability in her music that listeners feel as intimacy. You feel like she is singing directly to you, because there is nothing between her voice and your ear.

And her songwriting — whether for herself or for the world’s biggest artists — operates with a directness and an emotional intelligence that makes her lyrics land with unusual force. She does not reach for clever metaphors or intricate wordplay. She reaches for truth. And truth, in music as in everything else, is always the most powerful available option.

Tems’ Net Worth in 2026

Tems’ estimated net worth in 2026 is between $5 million and $10 million USD — a figure that reflects both the significant income her career has generated and the relatively short period over which she has been operating at the highest commercial level. Her wealth comes from multiple streams:

• Music streaming: Hundreds of millions of streams across Spotify, Apple Music, Audiomack, and YouTube from her own catalogue, plus royalty income from her features on “Essence,” “Wait For U,” and other globally successful collaborations
• Songwriting royalties: Co-writing credits on songs performed by Rihanna (“Lift Me Up”) and appearing alongside Beyoncé (“Move”) generate ongoing publishing income that will continue for decades
• Live performances: A growing international touring schedule — including her Coachella appearance and festival performances across Europe, North America, and Africa
• Brand endorsements: As one of the most globally recognised Nigerian female artists, she has attracted partnerships with fashion and lifestyle brands seeking to reach her young, style-conscious international audience
• Leading Vibe label: Her independent label imprint maintains a role in her commercial arrangements, retaining rights and revenue streams that would otherwise go to a major label exclusively

Some earlier estimates placed her net worth as low as $1 million — figures that significantly underestimate the cumulative value of her songwriting royalties, Grammy-era performance fees, and the revenue generated by her collaboration credits on globally certified songs. The $5–10 million range is a more accurate reflection of her actual financial position in 2026.

Full Discography

Career Timeline

Why Tems Matters: Writing the Future of African Music

In the decade since she produced “Mr Rebel” in her Lagos bedroom, Tems has accumulated a record that would be extraordinary for any artist of any nationality at any point in music history — and she has done it before turning thirty-one. Two Grammy Awards. An Oscar nomination. A Golden Globe nomination. The first Nigerian female Grammy winner. The first Nigerian with multiple Grammys. The first African female artist with seven Billboard Hot 100 entries. The first Nigerian Oscar nominee. A number-one Billboard Hot 100 entry. A number-one UK Singles Chart entry. Coachella. Rihanna’s voice carrying her words to the Academy Awards stage. Beyoncé recording her songs.

But the statistics, as impressive as they are, miss the most important thing about what she has done. She has demonstrated — with irrefutable evidence — that an African female artist can sit at the absolute pinnacle of global music on her own terms: as a producer, as a songwriter, as a vocalist, and as a creative visionary who does not compromise her artistic identity to make herself more palatable to non-African markets. She sounds like Lagos. She sounds like herself. And the world has come to meet her exactly where she is.

The voice they told her was too loud and ugly is now the most celebrated African female voice in the history of recorded music. That fact deserves to be stated clearly, without qualification, and without the false modesty that Nigerian culture sometimes demands of its women. Tems is extraordinary. The crown, as her name promised, is hers.

Frequently Asked Questions About Tems

What is Tems’ real name?

Tems’ real name is Temilade Openiyi. She was born on June 11, 1995, in Lagos State, Nigeria. Her first name, Temilade (spelled Témìládè in Yoruba), means “the crown is mine” or “mine is the crown” in Yoruba. She adopted the stage name Tems — a shortened version of Temilade — for her professional career.

How old is Tems?

Tems is 31 years old as of 2026. She was born on June 11, 1995, in Lagos State, Nigeria. She celebrated her 31st birthday on June 11, 2026. Her zodiac sign is Gemini.

What is Tems’ state of origin?

Tems is from Lagos State, Nigeria. She was born and raised in Lagos, attending Dowen College in Lekki for her secondary education before relocating to South Africa for university. Her mother is Yoruba Nigerian and her father is British-Nigerian. She spent a brief period in the United Kingdom as a very young child after her birth, before her family returned to Nigeria following her parents’ separation.

How many Grammys has Tems won?

Tems has won two Grammy Awards — making her the first Nigerian artist to win multiple Grammys. Her first win was for Best Melodic Rap Performance at the 65th Grammy Awards in 2023, for her collaboration on “Wait For U” with Future and Drake. Her second win was for Best African Music Performance at the 67th Grammy Awards in 2025, for her single “Love Me JeJe.” She also holds eight total Grammy nominations across her career.

Was Tems nominated for an Oscar?

Yes. Tems received an Academy Award (Oscar) nomination for Best Original Song at the 95th Academy Awards in 2023 for “Lift Me Up” — the tribute song she co-wrote for Rihanna, performed in the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. She co-wrote the song alongside Rihanna, composer Ludwig Göransson, and director Ryan Coogler. The nomination made her the first Nigerian to be nominated for an Academy Award. The song also received Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Award nominations.

What is Tems’ net worth?

Tems’ estimated net worth in 2026 is between $5 million and $10 million USD. Her wealth is generated through music streaming royalties from her own catalogue and collaboration credits, songwriting royalties from co-writing “Lift Me Up” for Rihanna (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), live performance fees, brand endorsements, and her Leading Vibe label. Some earlier estimates placed her net worth lower, but do not fully account for the cumulative value of her Grammy-era performance fees and ongoing publishing income.

Did Tems produce her own music?

Yes. Tems is a self-taught music producer. Her debut single “Mr Rebel” (2018) was produced entirely by herself. She has co-produced many of her own subsequent records, including “Burning” from her debut album Born in the Wild. Her ability to produce, write, and perform her own music is one of the defining characteristics of her artistic identity and gives her a level of creative control that most artists depend on external producers to achieve.

What is Tems’ debut album?

Tems’ debut studio album is Born in the Wild, released on June 7, 2024, through RCA Records and Since ’93. The 18-track album features collaborations with Asake (“Get It Right”) and J. Cole (“Free Fall”). Lead singles include “Me & U,” “Love Me JeJe” (which won a Grammy in 2025), and “Burning.” The album was previewed at Coachella 2024 and received strong international chart performance and critical acclaim. It was followed by the EP Love Is a Kingdom in 2025.