Tems: How a Featured Artist Became One of Music's Most In-Demand Names

In the article that follows, I trace how Tems became one of the most sought-after collaborators in music before her own catalogue caught up with that reputation — from "Essence" and "Wait for U" to two Grammy Awards and, in 2026, her first UK number one as a lead artist. It is a career built on being the voice other artists choose to call, and it says something worth thinking about regarding how recognition actually compounds over time, whatever field you work in.

Before Tems had a solo hit of her own on the Billboard Hot 100, she was already the voice other artists were calling. Temilade Openiyi built her international profile the unusual way — one collaboration at a time, with some of the biggest names in music — before her own catalogue caught up with the reputation those features had already earned her.

The Feature That Started It

Tems first reached a global audience through "Essence," her 2020 collaboration with fellow Nigerian star Wizkid. The song became the first Nigerian single to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, and after a remix with Justin Bieber, it climbed as high as number nine. It was the kind of breakthrough that could have defined an artist as a guest voice on other people's records — instead, it opened a run of collaborations that put her in direct contact with some of the industry's biggest names.

A Collaborator to the Biggest Names in Music

In 2021, Tems appeared on Drake's Certified Lover Boy with "Fountains." The following year, her vocals anchored Future's "Wait for U," which debuted directly at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 — a rare feat for any song, let alone a feature, and one that put her voice at the center of a chart-topping record before most casual listeners knew her name. That same stretch of years included co-writing Rihanna's "Lift Me Up," recorded for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which went on to earn nominations at both the Oscars and the Golden Globes, and a featured spot on Beyoncé's "Move." Few artists anywhere have been trusted with that concentration of high-profile collaborations in such a short span — and fewer still have managed it while working across genres as different as Afrobeats, hip-hop, and pop without the collaborations reading as a stretch for any of the artists involved.

Turning Features Into Her Own Firsts

What makes Tems's story distinct is how directly those collaborations translated into recognition for her own work. In 2023, she won a Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance for "Wait for U" — becoming the first Nigerian artist to win a Grammy. Two years later, at the 67th ceremony, she won again, for Best African Music Performance with "Love Me JeJe," making her the first Nigerian artist to win more than one. Along the way, she picked up four BET Awards, four NAACP Image Awards, and three Soul Train Music Awards, was named a Billboard Women in Music Breakthrough honoree in 2024, and became the first female Afrobeats artist invited to the Met Gala, in 2023. TIME included her on its 100 Next list that same year.

Each of those recognitions arrived while Afrobeats itself was still establishing its footing on award stages historically built around American and British pop and hip-hop. That context matters: Tems was not simply winning within an established lane for the genre — she was one of the artists whose wins helped establish that the lane existed at all, alongside peers from the same wave of Nigerian artists reshaping what counted as mainstream on those stages. As I explore in my Practical CBT Guide, turning external recognition like this into a stable, internal sense of one's own capability is a skill that can be built deliberately — it isn't simply handed over by an award.

A New Chapter, Under Her Own Name

In 2026, "Raindance," her collaboration with British artist Dave, became Tems's first single to reach number one on the UK Singles Chart — a milestone distinct from her earlier chart successes, which had largely come as a featured artist on other people's songs. It marks a shift that has been building since 2020: an artist whose name first traveled the world attached to other people's records is now, increasingly, the one other names are attached to.

What a Career Built on Collaboration Can Show

There is a pattern in Tems's trajectory that says something useful about how creative recognition actually works, independent of her personally: the artists who end up defining a genre are not always the ones chasing a solo spotlight first. Being the voice an established star chooses to call — Wizkid, Drake, Future, Rihanna, Beyoncé — is itself a form of recognition, one that compounds over time into something a debut single alone rarely builds as quickly. Tems's own catalogue has grown alongside that reputation rather than in spite of it, and the two are difficult to separate: the same voice that made "Essence" and "Wait for U" work for other artists is the one now carrying "Raindance" as her own.

It is a trajectory that runs in something close to the opposite direction of the usual pop narrative, where a solo breakthrough comes first and collaborations follow as a reward for it. For Tems, the collaborations came first, repeatedly, from artists with no shortage of options — and the recognition that eventually attached to her own name reads less like a launch than like a confirmation of something the music industry had already been telling itself for several years.

Where Confidence Built by Others Becomes Your Own

Psychology has a name for the pathway Tems's trajectory illustrates: repeated, credible validation
from people whose judgment already carries weight is one of the documented routes to what's called
self-efficacy — a person's belief in their own capability — alongside direct personal achievement.
Being chosen again and again by artists with no shortage of collaborators to pick from is exactly
that kind of validation, distinct from the more familiar route of building confidence entirely
alone. This point echoes what I explore in my book Our Archaic Wounds,
where I look at how an identity shaped partly through other people's recognition can still become
genuinely one's own over time. Nothing here establishes what that shift has actually felt like for
Tems personally — only that the documented sequence, features first and a headline single after, is
the kind of pattern this general mechanism describes.

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FAQ

Has Tems won a Grammy?

Yes. Tems won a Grammy Award for Best Melodic Rap Performance in 2023 for "Wait for U," becoming the first Nigerian artist to win a Grammy, and won again at the 67th ceremony in 2025 for Best African Music Performance with "Love Me JeJe."

What songs has Tems worked on with other artists?

Tems has collaborated with Wizkid ("Essence," 2020), Drake ("Fountains," 2021), Future ("Wait for U," 2022), Rihanna (co-writing "Lift Me Up," 2022), Beyoncé ("Move," 2022), and Dave ("Raindance," 2026).

Is "Essence" Tems's song or Wizkid's?

"Essence" is credited to Wizkid featuring Tems. Released in 2020, it became the first Nigerian song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching number nine after a remix with Justin Bieber.