Dotty is joined by Nigerian artist Tems on today’s The Dotty Show on Apple Music 1. Joining today’s show for ‘Worldwide Wednesday’, Tems talks to Dotty about her music, potential future collaborations, partying with Dave, being a perfectionist, Kylie Jenner singing along to her music and more.
Please find quotes from today’s interview below. Please credit The Dotty Show on Apple Music 1 if you use this information. Listen to the show in full live for free today from 3pm at apple.co/_Dotty.
QUOTES:
On future collaborations…
I mean, there’s a couple of people I’ve recently met and worked with, I’m excited to work with everybody. I can’t really mention names right now because I really want it to be a surprise. I’m excited to work with everyone. I really want to work with Aṣa just because I love her. In the future I’m thinking J. Cole or Kendrick or something.
On meeting Dave and a potential future collaboration…
Maybe, I don’t know. We were just vibing. We were out partying and just vibing. But yeah, there could possibly be. We’ve just met and we’re just vibing out really, so who knows what’s going to come up. I mean, we were at a party, so we were just really enjoying ourselves and kicking it off really.
On recording ‘Essence’ and being a perfectionist…
Not in the least bit, I don’t think about it like that. Even the day I recorded that I was still like, “I can do better. I think I can do better. Send me the beat and then let me do it again.” And they were like, “No, this is great.” And I was like, “Yeah, but I want to add some more.” I was still even trying to top it and they didn’t let me. I was happy with it. I always like to challenge myself and I used to be such a perfectionist. So I was like, “No, I can do much better.” But I just gave up and I was like, “You know what? This is fine.” But yeah, I had no clue. Wiz was like, “No, this is mad.” And I was like, “I mean, okay. Cool.”
On Kylie Jenner singing along to ‘Essence’…
That’s just good. When I was out in LA, I was just hearing it randomly in the most random places. And I just thought, “Wow, I didn’t know people knew this song over here.” And it’s crazy, literally.
On how she started out making music…
I think I was doing music on my own for a long time. It was just something I loved to do for myself. Then I got to a point where I was just like, “Why am I not sharing this music?” I just decided to put everything on the line and I was like, “I’m just going to dive right in and just put myself out there”. I met a producer group and they offered their studio to me to record my first song ‘Mr Rebel’. I recorded there, they helped me mix it, and I think two/three months later it was out, and that was the beginning.
On her first successes and listeners starting to pay attention to her music…
[The success of] ‘Mr Rebel’ was a huge surprise to me, I wasn’t really expecting anything. So, when I first heard my song on the radio it freaked me out because I was like, “How did they get the song?” I didn’t understand, I didn’t really know what was going on. By ‘Try Me’ it was just crazy, it was just so much response, the response was just so big and so massive. I think I’m still in shock even right now. I’m just grateful, really. I’m glad that people can connect to my story and my life and my songs. It really means a lot.
On which songs she’s looking forward to performing live…
Definitely going to perform my entire EP. I have never performed live my entire EP and definitely ‘Essence’ for sure. We haven’t performed that song at all together, so I think it’ll be crazy.