By Kunle Osapk
“If Tems has any respect for African music, then she should prove it now by calling the Grammys to come and collect back that award” — Music Base Africa
The award Tems won recently does not represent the Best African Music Performance at all.
First and foremost, apart from Nigeria, there was no artist from any other African country in this category to justify calling it the Best African music category! They should have just called it “Best Nigerian Music Performance”
The best performing African artist of 2024 was South African singer Tyla, and she was not even nominated! There are so many proper African projects that were released last year but were snubbed because the Grammy wanted PR from the Nigerian internet community to boost their show!
Beware, be prepared, get ready the rainy season is around the corner and Nigerian roads are nothing better when it rains.
Secondly, according to the Grammys, this category was supposed to recognize recordings that utilize unique local expressions from across the African continent, highlighting regional melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic musical traditions.
That song “Love Me Jeje” from Tems has nothing to do with an African sound! It is more of an electronic sound and R&B which doesn’t represent sounds from Africa in any way!
Traditional African sounds are made from our tools and not from electronic compositions.
As the biggest pan-African music blog and on behalf of 1.3 billion Africans, we want to strongly reject this award and tell the Grammys that if they want to nominate our artists again, they should do their homework!
They just proved to us once again that they know nothing about African music with this award that was given to Tems, and the best thing she can do to restore our honor is to reject and return this award to its owners!
