Tems Escaped the “Robot Plan” and Chose Music: How a Digital-Marketing Job Became the Career She Refused to Do for 10 Years

Nigerian singer Tems has revealed that her path to global music stardom almost took a very different turn. After graduating with a degree in economics, the singer secured a job in digital marketing and initially tried to follow what she jokingly described as the “robot plan”—graduate, get a job, behave like a responsible adult and keep doing the same thing for years. But somewhere between the office desk and the 10-year career forecast, Tems apparently looked at the script and decided to rewrite it.

Tems has previously spoken about the difficult decision to leave her corporate job in 2018 and pursue music full-time. The Grammy-winning singer studied economics in South Africa before returning to Lagos, where she worked in digital marketing. The move away from conventional employment eventually led to her releasing “Mr Rebel” and building the career that would later take her to global stages.

Tems Looked at the “Normal Plan” and Said No

According to the singer’s account, the plan after university was straightforward: get a job and become a responsible member of society. Nothing unusual there. The only problem was that Tems apparently realised she did not want to spend the next decade repeating the same routine simply because it was the expected path.

Her decision was not necessarily the easiest one. Reports on her early career describe how she returned to Lagos after university and took a digital-marketing job before eventually deciding that music was what she wanted to pursue seriously. In 2018, she left the job and committed herself to music.

From Office Desk to Global Music Stage

The gamble soon began producing results. Tems released “Mr Rebel” in 2018 and followed it with “Try Me” in 2019. Her breakthrough became even bigger after her collaboration with Wizkid on “Essence,” which helped introduce her distinctive voice to a global audience.

Since then, the career she chose over the “robot plan” has become considerably larger than the office routine she once imagined escaping. Her debut EP For Broken Ears arrived in 2020, while her later work and collaborations with international stars helped establish her as one of Nigeria’s most successful contemporary artists. Her 2024 debut album Born in the Wild further documented the journey she had chosen for herself.

The satirical lesson is almost painfully simple: sometimes the “safe plan” is only safe until you realise you cannot imagine yourself living it. Tems chose the uncertainty of music over the certainty of a decade behind a desk, and the rest became history. OGM News NG will continue to watch Tems‘ career as she proves that abandoning the expected route does not always mean losing your way—it can sometimes mean finally finding it.