An account of Nigerian music’s global influence is incomplete without the women shaping what the world hears. Tems and Ayra Starr are visible examples, but their importance cannot be explained simply by placing them beside more famous collaborators. Their records, writing and performances deserve attention in their own right. As of September 2026, their international stories offer two distinct ways of being a Nigerian artist with a worldwide audience.
Tems: the voice and the writer
Tems’ 2025 Grammy for Best African Music Performance went to Love Me JeJe. The award is a useful marker, but the song’s connection to Nigerian musical memory makes the achievement more interesting. Her label’s biography identifies its interpolation of Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 song of the same name. A contemporary international success can also send listeners back towards an earlier Nigerian recording and the artist who made it.
Her contribution to cinema demonstrates another kind of influence. The Academy’s official record for the 2023 Oscars names Tems among the composers of Lift Me Up from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and credits the lyrics to Tems and Ryan Coogler. The song was nominated for Original Song; it did not win. That recognition concerns authorship. It reminds readers that a Nigerian musician’s global work may be heard through another singer’s voice as well as through her own.
Tems has also continued to develop her own catalogue. Born in the Wild arrived in 2024, followed by the seven-track Love Is a Kingdom in November 2025. Pitchfork’s release report described the later project as largely written, composed and produced by Tems herself. These are existing releases, not a new album announcement today. Together they give listeners a fuller route into her work than a playlist of international collaborations alone.
Ayra Starr: room to experiment
Ayra Starr’s 2026 Grammy recognition came through Gimme Dat with Wizkid, nominated for Best African Music Performance. The category was won by Tyla’s PUSH 2 START. A nomination still places the recording in a documented international awards conversation, but its significance is better understood without inflating the result. Starr is the lead named artist on the collaboration, not an anonymous supporting voice in someone else’s success story.
At Teen Vogue Fest in Brooklyn in July 2026, Starr performed and discussed creative freedom. The magazine reported her reflections on working across Lagos, New York and Los Angeles and exploring R&B, pop and Afrobeats. She presented experimentation as an expression of her identity.
Our reading of those remarks is encouraging: an African artist can carry her origins into new sounds. For young listeners, that is an invitation to develop an individual voice.
Recognition without reducing the music to trophies
The two careers also invite more careful listening to credit lists. A Grammy performance award, an Oscar songwriting nomination, an album production credit and a festival appearance recognise different kinds of work. They are not interchangeable. Paying attention to those distinctions makes the celebration stronger: it reveals artists contributing as vocalists, writers and creative decision-makers, rather than merely counting the stages on which they have appeared.
For an accessible starting point, hear Tems’ Love Me JeJe alongside the earlier Seyi Sodimu recording, then explore Born in the Wild and Love Is a Kingdom. For Ayra Starr, Gimme Dat provides a documented recent collaboration to place beside her discussion of experimentation. These are invitations to listen, not a claim that one track can summarise either career. The most rewarding discovery often happens beyond the best-known chorus.
Nigerian women’s place in international music is part of the main story. Tems’ authorship and Starr’s insistence on creative freedom give that statement substance. Their example can widen what a young singer, songwriter or producer considers possible, while leaving room for many other voices to emerge. The achievement worth protecting is that breadth: an audience willing to hear different women, different ambitions and different sounds.
