After two years since the release of ‘Free Mind’, Grammy-winning Naija vocalist Temilade “Tems” Openiyi has marked her return as a solo artist with mind-soothing vocals and visuals for her latest single ‘Me & U’. Having made prominent appearances as a guest feature in Wizkid’s ‘Essence’ and Future’s “Wait For U” alongside Drake, the Lagos canary, this time, plays the star not only in her song but also in her self-directed music video.
‘Me & U’ is a spiritual ballad that straddles the fine line that sets club-friendly Afrobeats apart from traditional Afropop music without watering down the sincerity of her subject matter. Balanced on overlapping somber guitar strings and piano loops, ‘Me & U’ is a moody psalm that sustains its gravity save for the glimpse of Amapiano that cameos midway the song with a head-bopping log drum.
Lyrically, ‘Me & U’ shows Openiyi at her most vulnerable, borrowing only slightly from Cameroonian-American songbird Libianca’s ‘Jah’ playbook. “Give me one break, I need faith / Faith to believe you, faith to receive you / Give me something I’m lacking / I don’t need nothing, you are my everything,” she pleads in prayer with her signature velvet-textured voice. As a star who has traveled around the world, with acclaim worshiping the very places she steps, Tems denudes herself in veneration and sonically prostrates herself. With themes of worship and self-denial, the song echoes the sentiment she shared on X, prior the release of the song’s visuals, about Jesus: “He changed my life. And if you seek him, he’ll fill you up too.”
The visuals of ‘Me & U’ moves in harmony with the song, with coastal snapshots of nature, a calm sea wrinkled with ripples and lightning-lit thunderclouds. With the mood of rumination set, the singer matches the spirit of her surroundings, arrayed in a snow-white dress that accents her skin. Standing on the waters like her Master, she is an extension of the ocean itself, displaying her oneness with movements as graceful as voluptuous curves. The quiet personality of the music video and the understated vocals and production fuse to code a matrix that inspires that remembrance of one’s extra-dimensional authority.
‘Me & U’ is a down-to-earth offering, a special reminder from Tems Baby that one is never too big for where they came from.
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