Love is never one thing. It bends, expands, bruises, heals. In Tems’ new EP, it is evolves into a kingdom, a place she builds, guards, and offers only on her own terms.
Love Is A Kingdom explores love, power, spirituality, self-awareness, and emotional clarity across its seven tracks, but the songs are more like quiet sketches than fully formed ideas.
Tems has always treated love as layered and unstable. Her early singles, “Mr Rebel” and “Looku Looku,” show the restlessness that suggests she has never approached love as a neat thing.
She deepens this idea in her acclaimed debut EP For Broken Ears, extends it through the warm colours of If Orange Was A Place, and even lets it flicker through her presence on the impressive Born In The Wild. Across these projects, Tems circles one truth: love stretches, hides, and sometimes contradicts itself.
Self-love is widely considered the foundation of all other forms of love. Understanding that one’s well-being and happiness are the basis of a healthy relationship, Tems begins the album by asserting her importance on “First”, on which she declares self-renewal, independence, and reclaimed identity while rejecting external control and any form of competition.
As the EP’s opener, the song shows that Tems has moved past her fear of love and is no longer searching. She sings as someone who has arrived somewhere steady, a place with walls she built brick by brick. A kingdom.
But despite the self-assured tone, she is still uncertain how to express her affection on “I’m Not Sure”, because love is something she’s not used to. So, she leaves it to her partner to voice his affection, but all she demands is honesty.
[She flips the dynamic. Instead of performing affection, she demands honesty from her partner.]
On “Big Daddy”, Tems exudes confidence, calling out a deadbeat ex-lover with no ambition who still demands her devotion and worship. Calling him out, she croons: “Ooh, are you high on a mountain to be calling me? / Ooh, you may look like you’re breathing, but you’re dead to me.”
Having left her irresponsible partner, she opens herself up to new affection. She is a picture of unrestrained emotion on “Lagos Love”. The song appears to draw from the tenderness of “Love Me Jeje” off Born In The Wild, but it is wrapped in cool confidence.
On “Love Me Jeje”, she wants unfailing devotion, ready whenever her lover calls, because she loves only him and needs him more. That passion remains on “Lagos Love”, even more persistent. The song gently asks for reassurance while urging her partner to be clearer and avoid mixed signals. She sings as someone who knows what she wants and is unafraid to let love come to her. “How many days in a month are you thinkin’ of me?” she asks, needing proof that she is loved. “I need you to show me, show me how you love me!”
The fire of love burns brightly in her heart, and she wants to be loved the right way. Demanding assurance, she sings that she wants only him, to hold, to love, and to feel.
The passionate affection of “Lagos Love” carries into “Mine”. Confident in her desire, she sings that he belongs to her and she is keeping him until the end of time. Her love is undying, and he can’t deny it.
Her lustrous expression of love on “Mine” seems to have stabilised their love. But then Tems experiences a terrifying emotional collapse, showing that self-confidence doesn’t fully shield anyone from doubt in the affairs of the heart.
On “What You Need”, she questions her capacity to love. The song contrasts sharply with “Mine”, where she was full of joy. Now she is jaded, lost in her inner emotional crisis. Feeling in the dark, she desires to be alone and pushes her partner away. She is trying to protect her heart from being broken while unknowingly initiating the schism herself.
“Your love is not my lifeline, your love is not my home / Returning you, you’re not mine… to me, you don’t belong,” she sings, shutting herself away, rejecting the support system she built. “I’m better on my own, you’re better when you’re gone.”
And yet she is still loved; something that surprises and unsettles her.
Balancing vulnerability with introspection on “Is There A Reason”, Tems, now out of her melancholy, asks important questions: Why do you love me like this? Why lift me so high?
Now more at peace with her emotions, she appreciates him for everything he does, for showing her the truth, even through the sadness that almost ruined them.
Love Is A Kingdom is a brief album, laden with love and its vagaries. The melodies are easy, and the production is gentle and soothing.
But that calm and softness comes with a trade-off. The EP leans heavily into 90s and early-2000s American R&B aesthetics: slow grooves, wistful harmonies, and restrained instrumentation.
R&B, especially this subtle, nostalgic style, lives and dies on songwriting and instrumental arrangement. Unlike contemporary Pop and Afrobeats, it doesn’t hide behind exuberant drum patterns or dance-floor bass lines.
Tems has always had a voice made for the subtlety of R&B. But what’s missing here is the lyrical sharpness and inner tension that made her earlier work so striking. The ideas are clear but rarely surprising, partly due to the lackluster songwriting. These songs don’t cut as deep as they should; they glide more than they grip.
This isn’t a fall from grace. Tems remains one of the most distinctive artists of her generation. Love Is A Kingdom is, perhaps, a placeholder for an album of similar strains. But the middling nature of this album suggests she will need to reflect on making a bigger and better comeback with her next outing.
***Michael Kolawole is a screenwriter, playwright, poet and cultural journalist/critic. Catch him on X @mykflow
