Tems Height 2026: How Tall Is the Afrobeats Star Really?

Last updated: 3 November 2026 | By Nathan Cole

Tems is most commonly listed at 5 ft 4 in (163 cm). That is the figure on the majority of her biography profiles, and it is the number this article anchors on. But it is not the whole story, and any article that prints one height for Tems and stops there is hiding the interesting part: other listings give her as 5 ft 6 in or 5 ft 7 in, and reports say Tems herself once answered 5 ft 9 in when a fan asked her directly on X. No official measurement has ever been published, so the honest answer is a spread, not a single number.

The short version of her life explains why the question keeps getting asked. Temilade Openiyi, born 11 June 1995 in Lagos, Nigeria, is 31 in November 2026 and turns 32 on 11 June 2027. She went from uploading self-produced songs in Lagos to singing the hook on a Billboard Hot 100 number one, winning two Grammys, co-writing a song for Rihanna that earned an Oscar nomination, and headlining a world tour — all before her debut album arrived in 2024. Her stage presence does the rest: long braids, floor-length dresses, a voice pitched low and slow, and a habit of standing completely still while a stadium watches. People look at her and guess taller.

This article settles the height question properly, with every published listing on the table, then works through the life behind it: the Lagos-to-London childhood, the economics degree, the breakthrough, the Grammys, the money, and what she is doing in 2026, from a surprise EP to a Lagos homecoming concert in December. Money figures are labelled as estimates, height figures are labelled as listed, and where sources disagree, the disagreement is shown rather than smoothed over.

The Short Answer: 5 ft 4 in Listed, 5 ft 9 in Claimed

If you search “Tems height” you will get four different answers, and all four are published somewhere with confidence. That is the whole problem with this particular celebrity statistic: nobody has measured her, so every number on the internet is a listing copied from another listing, and the copies have drifted. The table below puts every version side by side, with its source type, so a reader can see exactly how the confusion happened.

Why does the self-claim matter if it is not a measurement? Because it is the only figure in the set that comes from Tems rather than from a profile writer. BuzzNigeria’s version of the story is specific: Tems revealed she is 5 ft 9 in, and the piece notes that this contradicts the popular report that she could be 5 ft 4 in. Music in Minnesota reports the same exchange — Tems answering a fan asking about her height on X. Neither outlet publishes a screenshot or a date for the exchange, which is why this article does not simply swap the anchor to 5 ft 9 in. A reader who wants one number should use 5 ft 4 in, because that is what most sources say. A reader who wants the truth should know about the 5 ft 9 in claim too, because it is the version Tems herself is reported to have given.

There is a second, simpler reason the guesses run tall. Tems performs in long dresses and heeled boots, stands very still on stage, and sings in a low register that reads as physically imposing. Photographs next to collaborators do not settle it either — camera angles, footwear and posture move a perceived height by inches in either direction. Until Tems or her team publishes a measured figure, the listings will keep disagreeing, and the spread itself is the accurate answer.

Early Life: Lagos, London, and an Economics Degree

Temilade Openiyi was born in Lagos on 11 June 1995, to a Nigerian mother and a British father. Her family relocated to the United Kingdom shortly after she was born, and her parents separated when she was five, after which she was raised by her mother. The family later returned to Lagos, where she attended Dowen College in Lekki. Music was already there: she sang in the school choir and learned piano, and she has described writing songs as a child, long before anyone paid her for one.

For university she went to South Africa, studying economics at Monash South Africa in Johannesburg. She graduated into office work — digital marketing jobs in Lagos — and kept making music on the side, teaching herself production because she could not afford to pay producers. The economics degree shows up in how she has run her career since: patient, independent, and allergic to rushed releases. She quit the day jobs only when the music could carry her, and she has never since released on anyone else’s schedule.

The Breakthrough: “Try Me”, “Essence” and the World Listening

Tems’ debut single, “Mr Rebel”, arrived in 2018 and went largely unheard outside Lagos. “Try Me” in 2019 changed that — a slow, self-produced alté-R&B record that sounded like nothing else on Nigerian radio and became her first real hit. Her debut EP, For Broken Ears, followed in 2020, and its closing track, “Higher”, would later become one of the most consequential samples of the decade.

The song that made her global came as a feature, not a single. “Essence”, from Wizkid’s 2020 album Made in Lagos, put Tems’ voice — deep, unhurried, almost conversational — over a warm Afrobeats groove, and the record travelled. The remix with Justin Bieber peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned Tems her first Grammy nomination, for Best Global Music Performance. A second EP, If Orange Was a Place, arrived in 2021, and a feature on Drake’s “Fountains” the same year put her on Certified Lover Boy. In three years she had gone from self-producing in a Lagos bedroom to being the voice other superstars called when a song needed gravity.

“Wait for U”, Beyoncé and an Oscar Nomination

Future’s “Wait for U”, released in May 2022, was built around a sample of “Higher” from For Broken Ears, with Drake alongside and Tems credited as a guest artist. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — making Tems the first African artist to debut at the top of the chart, per HypeTribeng’s career account — and at the 2023 Grammys it won Best Melodic Rap Performance, her first Grammy and the first won by a Nigerian woman. The song later became the first track to earn an African female artist one billion Spotify streams.

The same period put her in rooms most artists never enter. She contributed to Beyoncé’s Renaissance in 2022, and she co-wrote Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up” for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, a song that earned nominations at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes and the Grammys for Best Song Written for Visual Media. She had won a Grammy and been Oscar-nominated before releasing a debut album — a sequence almost unheard of for an artist from the Lagos alté scene.

Born in the Wild: The Debut Album and the First World Tour

Born in the Wild arrived in 2024 as an 18-track debut that stretched from R&B and soul to rap-leaning cuts, with J. Cole appearing on “Free Fall”. It earned three nominations at the 2025 Grammys — Best Global Music Album, Best R&B Song for “Burning”, and Best African Music Performance for “Love Me JeJe”, the last interpolating Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 Nigerian classic of the same name. “Love Me JeJe” won, giving Tems her second Grammy and her first as a solo lead artist, and making her the first Nigerian artist to win two Grammys.

The album’s tour, the Born in the Wild world tour, began in London in 2024 and was her first headline world tour. It also set the pattern for everything after: long gaps between projects, no filler, and a live show built around stillness rather than spectacle. In July 2025 she became the first African artist to perform at the FIFA Club World Cup Final halftime show, alongside J Balvin and Doja Cat.

2025-2026: Love Is a Kingdom, “Raindance” and the Second Album

After a quiet solo stretch in 2025, Tems moved on other people’s records: Dave’s “Raindance”, the remix of Ciza’s “Isaka II” with Omah Lay, Justin Bieber’s “I Think You’re Special” from SWAG II, and Show Dem Camp’s “You Get Me”. “Raindance” became her first No. 1 on the UK Official Singles Chart in January 2026 and held the top spot for two weeks — a collaboration that, per DancehallMag’s October 2026 interview account, began as a freestyle Tems recorded on her phone, with the finished song pieced together from that single session.

Then, on 21 November 2025, she surprise-released Love Is a Kingdom, a seven-track EP through RCA Records and Since ’93, her first solo project since Born in the Wild. The tracks — “First”, “I’m Not Sure”, “Big Daddy”, “Lagos Love”, “Mine”, “What You Need” and “Is There A Reason” — run just under 20 minutes, with Tems writing and producing most of the project herself. On 31 March 2026 she performed “What You Need” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, in a floor-length silver-white mesh dress before a live band half-hidden behind a thin curtain. UK festival dates followed in August 2026, including All Points East in London alongside Jorja Smith and Ayra Starr.

The next chapter is already in motion. In October 2026 reports detailed her submissions for the 2027 Grammys: Love Is a Kingdom for Album of the Year and Best Global Music Album, “What You Need” for Record and Song of the Year, “Raindance” for the rap categories, “Big Daddy” for Best African Music Performance, and “I Think You’re Special” with Bieber for Best R&B Duo/Group Performance. Submissions are not nominations — nominees were due to be announced on 16 November 2026 — but the breadth of the entries shows how far her range now stretches. In the same October interview she described her second album, still untitled and undated, as “more R&B leaning” and “more melancholic”, “like a river, very smooth, very mellow, lo-fi”. And on 20 December 2026 she closes the year at home: a Lagos homecoming concert at the Livespot Enterarena, part of the Love Is a Kingdom tour and her first major solo headline show in Nigeria in five years.

Height Compared: Tems Next to Her Afrobeats Peers

Height questions are rarely asked in isolation — readers want to know how Tems measures up against the artists she stands next to. The honest version of that comparison carries the same warning as the main figure: every number below is a listing, not a measurement, and the same drift that affects Tems affects her peers.

Wizkid, her “Essence” collaborator, is listed at about 5 ft 4 in, which would put the two at roughly the same height on stage — and indeed, photographs of the pair rarely show an obvious gap. Davido is listed taller, at about 5 ft 7 in. Burna Boy is listed taller still, at about 6 ft 1 in, which explains why he towers over most Afrobeats line-ups. Ayra Starr is listed at about 5 ft 4 in, and Tyla at about 5 ft 3 in, both in Tems’ band. The useful conclusion is narrow: on the most-listed figures, Tems sits in the middle of her peer group — shorter than Burna Boy and Davido, level with Wizkid and Ayra Starr, and a touch above Tyla. If the reported 5 ft 9 in self-claim were the true figure, she would instead be among the tallest women in the genre, level with or above most of her male collaborators. That is exactly why the claim keeps circulating: it would change the whole comparison.

Age, Birthday and the 31-Year-Old Milestone

Tems turned 31 on 11 June 2026, and the birthday itself became a news peg: career retrospectives in June 2026 marked the date with the same milestones this article traces — the $12 upload fee story, the Essence breakthrough, the two Grammys, and a performance slot at the Obama Presidential Center grand opening. She is 31 in November 2026 and turns 32 on 11 June 2027. Some older profiles still call her 30, frozen from pages written before her June 2026 birthday; the birth date, 11 June 1995, has never changed, only the arithmetic around it.

Age matters for Tems’ story because her rise was slow by pop standards. She was 24 when “Try Me” broke, 25 when “Essence” travelled, 27 when “Wait for U” topped the Hot 100, and 29 when her debut album finally arrived. The height question and the age question get confused for the same reason: stale pages. A profile that has not been updated since 2024 gets both wrong at once.

Personal Life: Private, Unmarried, and the Rumours She Does Not Confirm

Tems is not married and has no publicly confirmed relationship. She keeps her private life out of interviews, and the site does not fill that silence with speculation. What can be reported is the status of the rumours themselves: in 2026, Capital XTRA noted she had “recently been rumoured to be dating Dave”, her “Raindance” collaborator, and framed it explicitly as a rumour. Neither Tems nor Dave has confirmed it, so this article records it as an unconfirmed rumour and nothing more.

What is confirmed about her family is the shape of her childhood: raised by her mother after her parents separated when she was five, with a British father and a Nigerian mother, and a childhood split between the UK and Lagos. She does not publish details about siblings or a current partner, and the article respects that boundary rather than inventing a fuller picture.

Money in Context: The Ten Million Estimate

Celebrity Net Worth puts Tems’ fortune at $10 million, and several 2026 trackers land lower, at $3 million to $5 million. This article anchors on $10 million inside a $3-10 million range. Two outliers are set aside: a $100 million figure from one biography site, which would make her richer than most of her collaborators combined and contradicts every other published estimate, and a $200,000 figure from another, which predates her Grammy years and has not been updated. Both fail the same test — they cannot be reconciled with the mainstream band, and the pages carrying them carry other stale facts too.

The income story is straightforward. Touring is the engine: a headline world tour in 2024, festival dates in 2026, and a Lagos homecoming closing the year. Streaming and songwriting royalties are the second leg, including credits on other artists’ hits — “Lift Me Up”, “Wait for U”, “Essence” — that pay long after release. High-profile features and collaborations are the third. There is no audited balance sheet, no disclosed property portfolio, and no business exit in her record, which is why the range stays wide and why any single-number claim should be read as an estimate. At 31, with a second album in progress and a Grammy submission slate for 2027, the trajectory points up rather than down.

Weight and Body Statistics: Listed, Not Confirmed

Biography profiles that list Tems’ height also tend to list her weight at about 60 kg (132 lb), with some giving a band of 130-150 lb. No confirmed figure exists, and weight is the least reliable statistic of all for a touring artist — it moves with touring schedules, and no outlet has ever published a measured figure. This article reports the listing because readers ask for it, and labels it as a listing for the same reason the height is labelled: a number repeated across profiles is not the same as a number verified. Other body statistics published by gossip profiles are not repeated here; they are unsourced, and repeating them would add nothing a reader can trust.

Sources & Reporting

Reporting window: November 2026, with facts checked against dated sources: the 11 June 1995 birth date and Lagos birthplace (Celebrity Net Worth, Heightopedia, biography profiles); height listings at 5 ft 4 in (BiogPedia, Heightopedia, Creebhills, Trengezie), 5 ft 6 in (Healthy Celeb, ResearchRoom), 5 ft 7 in (DNB Stories), and the reported 5 ft 9 in self-claim via X (BuzzNigeria, Music in Minnesota); the Dowen College and Monash South Africa economics education (Heightopedia, Sellatease); “Try Me” 2019, For Broken Ears 2020, “Essence” and its Bieber remix Hot 100 peak (Wikipedia awards list, Nsemwokrom); “Wait for U” May 2022 release, Hot 100 No. 1 debut and 2023 Grammy win (Pulse Kenya, HypeTribeng); “Lift Me Up” Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy nominations (Nsemwokrom, Wikipedia); Born in the Wild 2024 and its three 2025 Grammy nominations with the “Love Me JeJe” win (Wikipedia, EBN TV); FIFA Club World Cup halftime show July 2025 (EBN TV); “Raindance” UK No. 1 for two weeks and the phone-freestyle origin (DancehallMag, October 2026); Love Is a Kingdom surprise release 21 November 2025, seven tracks, RCA/Since ’93 (Wikipedia, EBN TV); Fallon performance 31 March 2026 (Scrollworthy); All Points East August 2026 (Capital XTRA); Lagos homecoming 20 December 2026 (OTMedia, 13 October 2026); 2027 Grammy submissions and 16 November 2026 nomination announcement date (Harare.Today); money figures from Celebrity Net Worth ($10 million) inside a $3-10 million tracker range, with $100 million and $200,000 outliers set aside for the reasons given. Height and weight are reported as listed, not measured. No figure in this article comes from Tems’ private records, which are not public. Corrections: figures are updated when new reporting emerges — contact us via the About page if you spot an error.

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