Viggy and I are screaming this the second we hear the kick and claps of the drumbeat, now thunderous and grand on Radio City’s mic’d drum set. Two and a half years ago in his much-loved Toyota Corolla, he introduced me to Tems, a killer Nigerian singer-songwriter-producer. This was same day we became true friends. I’d moved to D.C. a month ago; as friends of friends we’d been making an effort to hang out, affecting an intimacy we both knew would come but wasn’t there yet.
We were with two other friends on a day trip to an architecture museum on a sunny weekend morning, and as the highway opened into miles of horse fields, he put “Ice T” on the car radio. He started singing . . . I didn’t know he could sing like that. I also remember thinking, this song is perfect. Both the track and his singing voice were easy and smooth. The road was winding and time stretched out into something long, lush, and strange.
Tems’s presence and lyrics are all about sitting in your feelings and declaring it with your chest, no shame. This grounds her music, otherwise classified as Afro-pop, R&B, dancehall, and soul, in a felt wisdom. I love all of Tems’s songs, but this one has been in my top 10 two years in a row.
Tems is enjoying herself, doing playful runs on certain words, her hair fanning wildly behind her. Viggy said afterward she seemed to be on the verge of shaking ass but held back, but I disagree—I think she held herself still on purpose, letting her deep, textured voice swaddle the 5,000 seats in the orchestra hall. Journalists have described her sound as “velvety” and “androgynous,” but I like Viggy’s description best: “It’s like honey, it’s like honey slipping down a log of wood—like tree sap,” he said to me on the train, after the show. “It’s like the rugged quality of a tree trunk and the gooey, smooth quality of sap. Why would those two things go together? But they do!”
To me this song is about letting yourself go in a relationship, describing the tenderness of the moments you quit performing. You’ve built the house—now you can sit back and relax in it. To make iced tea, and to “make it with your lemons” is a surprising metaphor. She describes the process in detail: squeezing the lemons, stirring, creating a drink and a vibe, getting into it, getting comfortable.