At music’s biggest night Temilade Openiyi, professionally known as Tems became the first-ever Nigerian female artist to receive an award at the 65th Grammy Awards ceremony.
The singer received the best Melodic Rap Performance for her feature on US rapper Future’s WAIT FOR U which also feature Drake. She becomes the second Nigerian-based artist to receive a Grammy award in a major category after Wizkid who received an award for Best Video in a feature on Beyoncé’s Brown Skin Girl. She also becomes only the third Nigerian woman to win the award following behind Nigerian-British artistes, Sade Adu (Best New Artist in 1986) and Cynthia Erivo (Best Theatre Album in 2017).
Burna Boy missed out on both Global Music category awards as ‘Last Last’ lost Best Global Song Performance to ‘Bayethe’ by Wouter Kellerman, Zakes Bantwini & Nomcebo Zikod and ‘Love Damini’ lost to Masa Takumi’s Sakura for the Global Music Album category.
Read also: Tems takes home first Grammy Award
For most international artists it becomes a dream made into reality when they win the Best Album Of The Year category at the Grammys. This year Harry Styles, US pop singer raked the award over the likes of Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, Adele, Coldplay, Bad Bunny and Lizzo. Beyoncé however became the most awarded Grammy winner with 32 wins across her career as her album Renaissance picked up four wins including Best RnB Song, Best Traditional RnB performance, Best Dance/ Electronic Recording and Best Dance/ Electronic Album.
Other major winners include Bonnie Raitt’s ‘Just Like That’ for Song of The Year, Samara Joy for Best New Artist, Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers’ for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Song for ‘The Heart Part 5’ , Taylor Swift’s ‘All Too Well: The Short Film’ for Best Music Video, Best Record to Lizzo’s ‘About Damn Time’ , Jack Antonoff for Producer, Non-Classical among others.
