ELLE STYLE AWARDS WINNERS
THE MUSICIAN TALKS ABOUT CASTING OFF PAST VERSIONS OF HERSELF, AND WHY SHE’S READY FOR BEYONCÉ’S PHONE CALL
THIS PAGE: coat, around £3,445, Y/PROJECT. Boots, £795, ROKER. Rose gold and diamond T earrings, £7,825, gold and diamond hoop T earrings, £8,825, diamond T necklace, price on request, gold and diamond T pendant, £8,650, gold T necklace, £975, gold T bangle, £7,900, white gold T bangle, £13,000, gold and diamond T ring, £4,475, T ring, £7,075, T ring, £2,375, T ring, £2,050; and gold and diamond T ring, £6,700, all TIFFANY & CO. OPPOSITE: coat, £8,750, ALAÏA. Hat, price on request, NINA RICCI. Diamond T necklace, price on request, gold and diamond T necklace, £8,650, gold T necklace, £975, rose gold and diamond T hoop earrings, £7,825, and gold and diamond T hoop earrings, £8,825, all TIFFANY & CO
TEMS IS CHOKING UP. WE’RE MIDWAY through a conversation that has felt philosophical, warm and animated – soaked in feeling. In the past, the singer has been described as someone whose voice is ‘unchangingly mellow’. Not so today. With just the faintest crack in her voice, she describes feeling ‘blessed’ and grateful to have lived a life filled with love.
The Nigerian-born, London-based singer-songwriter and producer – who has become the face of the wildly popular Afrobeats movement that has taken over the world – is set on remaining true to these feelings and to herself, ‘true to my arts and true to my music’. She has worked with (or for) some of the biggest pop artists of the decade: Beyoncé, Rihanna, Drake and Justin Bieber, to name a few. She’s won a Grammy, been nominated for an Academy Award for her writing work on Black Panther’s ‘Lift Me Up’ and turned heads with an audacious look for the ceremony.
Born Temilade Openiyi, Tems, 28, was brought up by her mother in Lagos, Nigeria after her parents’ divorce. A selfconfessed introvert, she was a shy child, and says she had tricky, lonely teenage years, moving through depressive states and what sounds like a general sense of nihilism. ‘When you’re a teenager, you feel as though no one understands you, and it’s you against the world,’ she says. In hindsight, she knows it was ‘all about perception’, but that didn’t make it easier at the time.
She turned to music and poetry to help see her through: joining a choir; writing dozens of songs and poems about her life experiences. Immediately following school, however, she reluctantly moved to South Africa to study economics, after which she got a 9 to 5 job back in Nigeria; it felt like ‘prison’ to her. ‘It’s suffocating because when you don’t enjoy it… you’re not passionate about it. So the job you’re doing is just average. You’re not getting better. Ju
