Tems – Born in the Wild

With the release of her debut album just days before her 29th birthday, Tems already feels like something of the grand dame of Afropop. Even more than Tiwa Savage, who provided backing vocals for the likes of George Michael, Mary J. Blige and Chaka Khan before graduating from the Berklee College of Music, it is Tems the self-starter with a little bit of gravel and bass to her voice who the current generation of crossover stars cite in reverential terms when they talk about things like transgression and influence. Ayra Starr has been forced to fend off comparisons to Tems while handing the singer her flowers, and Tyla despite the barnstorming success of ‘Water’ last fall pushed back the release of her self-titled debut for the sake of a collaboration with Tems on the track ‘No. 1’, saying ‘Of our generation, she’s like the example. She’s been killing it and she’s been opening so many doors for us’.

After quitting her day job and taking to YouTube in a bid to learn how to self-produce, Tems saw her fledgeling effort ‘Try Me’ go viral and she released her first extended play For Broken Ears in September of 2020, shortly before her featuring role on the Wizkid single ‘Essence’ led her to stardom. As it grew over the spring and summer of 2021, the track became the first Nigerian song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States then reached the top ten following a remix version with Justin Bieber, with the muggy and sultry ‘Essence’ soon heralded by everyone from Barack Obama to Kanye West before winding up atop the Rolling Stone best songs of 2021 list.

When stems from the For Broken Ears track ‘Higher’ were sampled on the Future and Drake tandem ‘Wait for U’, it was as though Tems had been carried to chart-topping and Grammy success although she was really the one doing the driving, and as ‘Free Mind’ from the same extended play also climbed the charts her songwriting prowess won acclaim, as the Tems and Ryan Coogler-penned ‘Lift Me Up’ by Rihanna was nominated for best original song at the 95th Academy Awards as the lead single from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack album.

Her long awaited full-length debut then might have served as a victory lap or an attempt to further stamp her authority on the scene, whether by way of genre diversions or grandiose balladry. So it’s all the more startling that Born in the Wild opens with the downcast strums of a guitar as Tems’ cracked and unadorned voice starts to lament news cycles and her own wandering focus, slipping readily into the arms of memory as she sings ‘When I was young, young and dumb, I was always running away’.

Beginning with the title track, Born in the Wild abounds in juxtapositions of her life before fame and a success which is not material but coded instead as something personal and hard-won, a steady and enduring process of self-realisation. Rife with both longing and defiance, the record carries echoes of the 13-year-old girl who fancied the calling of music but couldn’t see the path, and was beset by the sort of expectations and doubts and personal and financial insecurities typical of any young woman, especially growing up in a socially conservative country like Nigeria. Her voice, a model of resilience which it would be impossible to replicate, shifts easily between those dolorous tones and a tender butteriness, while her lyrics often take the guise of a dialogue which is really a form of self-address, wary yet philosophical and praiseful without being over-proud.

When on ‘Born in the Wild’ she sings ‘I grew up in the wilderness, didn’t know much about openness’ she is talking primarily about being open with herself, and when she repeats ‘The world is mine, the world is mine’ she is no Tony Montana from Scarface, instead of emblazoning herself and her music with boosterist odes to free will and avarice seeking to carve out her own little plot of land and settle into it, aware that there are more things in heaven and earth, and that feelings of self-love and self-respect inhabit their own fragile ecosystem.

After a spoken-word interlude over limpid piano keys, where Tems hums in thoughtful assent as another voice outlines her predicament, dealing in some of the criticisms she has faced over her rapid ascent and the ensuing self-doubt, the track ‘Burning’ is an inversion of the ‘Juicy’ high life, capturing the pitfalls of fame and how its web of deceit, sometimes sharp and sometimes sweet, almost inevitably impacts the capacity for self-knowledge. The driving and upbeat ‘Wickedest’ briefly recapitulates her rise with a vow to keep on trucking, which leads into ‘Love Me JeJe’, her take on Seyi Sodimu and Shaffy Bello’s late-nineties Afro-soul classic, the most buoyant moment on Born in the Wild as Tems solicits a tender touch through glowing beats and call-and-response choruses. The music video for ‘Love Me JeJe’ might find the singer in the karaoke bar but the song is pure summer sun, and when she sings ‘I’m on your wave right now’ it’s an invitation to get with the vibe and get on her level.

Though she is typically lumped in with the genre, which has become a byword for whole swathe of African artists with crossover appeal, Tems heartily eschews the Afrobeats label. Some of her earlier songs dabbled more with that amorphous blend of house music and hip hop, highlife, dancehall and soca or the airy synths and log drum basslines of amapiano, but Born in the Wild mostly delivers a shimmering mid-tempo R&B, with Tems again taking the lead on songwriting and production with support from GuiltyBeatz, while the prominent Nigerian producers Spax, Sarz, P2J and LONDON also make guest appearances. Conga polyrhythms and whistling winds both fortify and soften her sound, with shekere rattles showcasing her Yoruba heritage. And the song ‘Wickedest’ samples Magic System’s turn-of-the-century zouglou hit ‘1er Gaou’, while the elastic ‘why-oh-whys’ of the reggae and dancehall star Diana King are interpolated in the middle of ‘Gangsta’.

Insular and contemplative though always with a steely resolve, on some of the more uptempo tracks her stems can take on a throaty, glottal and percussive character. And while her voice carries the resonance and purity of a clarion, even the subtlest of bends or changes of pitch seem to imbue her words with layers of meaning, where ‘tunnel vision’ suggests a certain isolation as much as fearless self-drive, and ‘burning’ might indicate a fiery passion or something in the loins as well as anxietal dread or the flush of embarrassment. Tems spent most of her youth in Lagos and its watery surrounds, and while the city with its characters and locales plays an important part on Born in the Wild, as an aspiring artist she could gaze beyond the lagoon with its barrier islands and sand spits way out across the Atlantic, citing Céline Dion as one of her abiding loves for the jump-off-a-cliff emotional heft of her music.

‘Get It Right’ with Asake is slinkily seductive with a serpentine opening, and ‘Ready’ through a languorous stupor once more summons up a bit of that steely inner resolve. Occasionally as on ‘Gangsta’ we find Tems breaking out of her shell and hewing off the shackles of introversion and doubt, reaching out a hand for a companion who might muster the same sort of courage and make this thing click better. But then the song ‘Fortunate’ is about the good luck of being with a love rat whose emotional and physical infidelities are so brazen that parting becomes inevitable, an easy choice to make as an act of pride and self-care. Maintaining the same air of wistful acceptance, ‘Boy O Boy’ with its soft-strummed calypso guitar serves as a semi-fond farewell.

If several of the songs on Born in the Wild introduce themes of deceit and betrayal, still they tend to circle back round with a self-accusatory tone, realising that the road is long and if there’s unhappiness to bear, more often than not we may be complicit in our own unhappiness. ‘Forever’ is a hot-stepping paean to change, a blue-baller where Tems leans into the sexual frustrations of a former lover while she has already spread her wings. Beyond its cherubic opening, ‘Free Fall’ with J.Cole is another slinky strutter, and the album’s second interlude talks about being shaped by experience, through fragments of pep talks which broach themes of compassion and the need to find some semblance of good in the world despite a daily barrage of examples to the contrary. ‘Do it crying, but fucking do it’ the track concludes, ‘Cause that is what it actually means to live’.

‘Turn Me Up’ boasts a balmy and spectral quality, with muted keys and a sinking bass line, as though the song had been left out in the sun to accumulate roots and webs. Adopting reggae snarls and licks, Tems chews up and spits out politicians, critics, false lovers and other ne’er-do-wells, issuing admonitions and words of warning even for forces bigger than herself. Then the fathoms-deep ‘Me & U’ is an ontological treatise on faith and substance, the first of two singles which served as a prelude to Born in the Wild with the stellar ‘Not An Angel’ marked only by its absence.

Nodding to 50 Cent, with a hip hop bounce on ‘T-Unit’ the artist blows off the biters, a battle cry and victory march over crunching drums and roiling guitar riffs. With its claves keeping time, ‘You in My Face’ is a languid heart-to-heart, a late night communion with the person who glints back through the mirror, described by Tems as a song about the quest for inner peace by way of a conversation with her inner child, who is evoked through the song’s flickering, warbling, flamenco-flecked coda. Then ‘Hold On’ brings Born in the Wild to a close with a synth-pop shimmer, recapitulating the record’s themes about realising lifelong dreams, pushing through all of the mistakes and staying true to oneself. ‘This is for the girl in the dark’ Tems sings, as the first rays of daylight peek over the horizon.