Grammy-winning singer Temilade Openiyi, popularly known as Tems, has revealed why she couldn’t release her debut album in 2021.

She blamed it on a serious illness that forced her into surgery and six months of recovery.

The sultry singer made this revelation while speaking in a recent interview with the New York Times.

She had stopped on the East Coast, while on her way to Los Angeles, where she would soon begin rehearsals for her debut appearance at the Coachella music festival.

Following the disclosed illness, the songstress said she decided to release her second extended play, ‘If Orange Was a Place’ instead of the full album.

According to her, fighting her way back to health partly inspired her new music, which she said was about embracing life as a warrior.

“Being a warrior is about not giving up. Even if they cut your leg, you walk on your knees, you fight on your knees using what you have, and that’s good enough”, she said.

Tems, who hit the global reckoning in 2020 after appearing on Wizkid’s summer hit ‘Essence, said her

music is an effort to reconcile the opposing themes of her life: willfulness and submission, control and freedom, tension and release.