Tems Revels in Her Independent Streak

Tems isn’t afraid of tension. Take a quick scan and you’ll find it as a covert throughline across her discography. From her angsty 2018 debut “Mr Rebel” to her plainspoken confrontations on 2020’s “Higher,” the the 30-year-old Nigerian singer understands the wisdom that the first step to resolving any issue is to simply confront it, no matter how uncomfortable. Even if she can often seem laid back, Tems fervently accosts misconceptions in her work, faces her fears head on, and demands resolution to unresolved emotional entanglements.

In her latest EP Love Is a Kingdom, she continues that streak – addressing early doubters, seeking clarity on emotional grey areas, and leaving a strongly worded PSA for the people who seek to define her – all while veering off to find moments of calm, and space to simply clear her head.

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Across 7 tracks, Tems ruminates on power, love, spirituality, mixed perceptions, and complicated feelings. The EP also runs like a long-held exhale that Tems lets out during a brief moment of quiet, shifting through soul, R&B, and Afropop. After a feature on Wizkid’s global hit “Essence” in 2020, Tems has maintained a rapid international presence in the past five years, winning two Grammys, writing songs for Rihanna, featuring on Beyoncè’s Renaissance, releasing her debut album, and getting an Oscar nomination. This EP embodies a much needed break in transmission as she tries to set certain records straight.

On “What You Need,” she weaves a sharply honest story about accosting the truth and letting it go. “Your love is not my lifeline/I am better on my own,” Tems croons to a lighthearted R&B beat that captures the eerie feeling of looking out the window on a rainy night while admitting the end of a potentially catastrophic partnership.

“First,” the album’s opener follows that arc of truth-telling. This club-ready Afropop joint uses a groovy bounce to deliver a revelation and a statement. Here Tems sets a new standard of engagement, reclaiming misperceptions of her character while delivering a reminder of how far she’s come and asserting her right to be just as human as anyone else. “They keep trying to control me/They don’t care how much it hurts me,” she sings as she reaffirms that when it comes down to it, she’ll put herself first.

That assertive spirit holds strong on “Big Daddy,” another standout Afropop number that manages to make confrontation euphoric. The track, like much of the project, calls back the sharp-toothed writing and an uncompromising bite of early Tems, an artist who began her career writing and producing all her music herself, just as she did for much of this EP. “Now you’re begging me to take a chance/What were you doing that you didn’t have my back?,” she asks, making frank speech sound intriguing. The angst is back, except this time it’s emerging from a version of Tems that is cosmopolitan, sagacious, and incredibly self-aware.

That sense of growth runs throughout the project. It’s evident in the maturity of her writing, particularly in her expert use of emphasis when she runs her hooks over and over until they stick. On the flip side of that, her penchant for repetition sometimes revives already explored topics without offering fresh conclusions. Still, Tems runs a well-coordinated ship by balancing the biting with the gentle. It’s the most practical way of engaging in a confrontation anyway. Go armed with the tools to aggravate and later soothe yourself, Tems seems to say.

This ethos is better captured in tracks like “Lagos Love” and “Is There A Reason?,” the last song on the EP. Here Tems creates her most technically ambitious work yet, tapping into a new level of soulfulness by rendering her voice slightly wounded and wanting. The track is one of the shortest on the EP but the most concise, composed simply of guitar, strings, Tems’ lilting falsetto, and sparse backing vocals. The track rounds off Love Is a Kingdom with an inkling of the promising direction Tems might be taking her sound next. Also present here is a disarming tenderness, one Tems has shown capable of offering herself after handling so much tension and one she extends out to her listeners, in the hopes that they too will take it and use it to soothe themselves.

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