Tems under fire for denigrating Afrobeats

Like Burna Boy, Grammy award-winning Nigerian artist Temilade Openiyi aka Tems has made negative headlines with a recent interview she granted American rapper Kendrick Lamar, saying that there was nothing spiritual about Nigerian music that she could connect to.
She said she pursued classic RnB instead of Afrobeats because she was more familiar with this type of music associated with artists like Celine Dion.

According to her, she wanted to make a difference by producing music that would touch souls and connect with people.

Many music lovers did not find her statement funny and took several shades at the singer.

An angry Femi Eseku said: “Once some of these silly artists reach a global stage, especially in the USA, they somehow jamtalk. I guess there is a systemic agenda to use some of our supposed best to deride our continent. Whizkid and Davido have done too much positive inspiration to amass the black race under one platform that they are now encouraging this type of trash talk from Burna Boy and now this nitwit called Tems to unbalance what has been done so far. Many may not see this. Why do they talk rubbish only to western based media?”

In the same vein, Olayemi Israel said: “I don’t just know why these artists always mistalk. Must they say something to belittle us at the world stage seeing we are taking over the music scene all over the world.”