Tems Owns The Leading Vibe UK Limited Alone. It Has Not Appeared on a Release Since Her 2021 RCA Deal.

Tems owns a UK company outright. It released her first work. It has not appeared on a record of hers since she signed to a major label five years ago, and nothing in the public filing history says what, if anything, it does now.

The company is The Leading Vibe UK Limited, number 12791380 on the UK register, incorporated on 4 August 2020. Its sole person with significant control is Temilade Anna Adejoke Openiyi: Nigerian, resident in England, born June 1995, holding 75 per cent or more of the shares and votes and the right to appoint or remove directors, notified the same day the company was formed. She is also its only director. No one else has ever held a stake in it, sat on its board, or lent it money against a registered charge.

That name and birth month correspond exactly to Tems, the Nigerian singer publicly reported as Temilade Openiyi, born in June 1995. This record treats that correspondence as strong, on an exact legal-name and birth-month-and-year match, and not as independently proven beyond the register itself, in line with this desk’s standing caveat on any identification made from a Companies House filing rather than a document that names the artist directly.

What the copyright line shows

Seven weeks after the company was incorporated, on 25 September 2020, Tems released her debut EP, For Broken Ears. Apple’s own catalogue record for the release, fetched directly for this record, carries the phonographic copyright line “℗ 2020 Leading Vibe Ltd.” Discogs and the EP’s own streaming credits carry the same attribution. At that point Tems was unsigned to any major label; the company bearing her own initials in miniature, “Leading Vibe,” is the entity the market treated as the rights holder of record.

A year later, that changed. Sony Music’s Canadian newsroom announced on 16 September 2021 that Tems had signed with Since ’93/RCA Records, timed to the release of her second EP, If Orange Was a Place. Apple’s catalogue lookup for her full discography, covering every project through November 2025, shows the phonogram credit on that EP as “℗ 2021 RCA Records/Since 93′.” Every own-catalogue project since carries the identical construction: Born in the Wild, her debut album released 6 June 2024, “℗ 2024 RCA Records/Since 93′”; and Love Is a Kingdom, released 21 November 2025, “℗ 2025 RCA Records/Since 93′.” Leading Vibe does not appear in the claimant position on any of them.

A phonogram credit is not a contract. It records the claim a distributor delivered to a streaming service, not the terms of the underlying agreement. What it does establish, reliably, is who the market has been told is asserting copyright in the recording at each point in time. On that measure, ownership moved from a company Tems alone controls to a joint Sony Music imprint the same month she signed to it, and has not moved back.

What Leading Vibe is not

It is worth being precise about what this company is not, because the similarity of the names invites a mistake. Since ’93, the imprint on every Tems release since 2021, is a separate set of UK companies entirely: Since 93 Ltd, Since 93 Records Ltd and Since 93 Publishing Ltd, all registered at 5a Bear Lane, Southwark, roughly five miles from Leading Vibe’s registered office. Since 93 Records Ltd and Since 93 Publishing Ltd each list a single person with significant control, Riki Bleau, British, notified 1 January 2017 at the 75 per cent or more band. No filing for any of the three Since ’93 companies names Openiyi as an officer, a PSC, or in any other capacity. Trade press describes Glyn Aikins as Since ’93’s co-president alongside Bleau; that is a press characterisation, and Companies House does not record him as a PSC of either company. The two structures, Tems’s own company and the imprint that now carries her credit, do not overlap on the register at all.

It is also worth being precise about what the shared registered-office pattern does and does not mean. Leading Vibe’s office moved on 28 April 2023 to 101 New Cavendish Street, 1st Floor South, London, the same suite address this desk has separately documented as the registered office of Burna Boy’s Spaceship companies. That address is a mass company-formation and accountancy service address: public filings show dozens of unrelated businesses registered at the same suite, and Leading Vibe did not move there until nearly three years after incorporation, from a different address at 64 New Cavendish Street. Sharing a formation agent’s address is not evidence of any business relationship between the two artists’ companies, and this record makes no such claim.

What is established, and what is not

Established: Leading Vibe is real, active, wholly owned by one named person whose identity corresponds strongly to Tems, and was the credited rights holder on her debut release. Established: it has not carried a phonogram credit on any of her four subsequent own-catalogue projects, checked through November 2025, all of which credit RCA Records and Since ’93 instead. Established: no charge, cessation, or change of control has ever been filed against it; it remains open, current on its confirmation statements, and current on its (unaudited, total-exemption) accounts.

Not established: what Leading Vibe currently does, if anything. Total exemption accounts carry no profit and loss statement, so no turnover figure exists in the public filing for any year since 2020. Not established: whether Leading Vibe holds any residual interest in For Broken Ears itself, whether that EP’s rights moved to RCA/Since ’93 at any point after 2021, or whether Leading Vibe functions today as a loan-out, touring or personal-services vehicle rather than a rights-holding one, a common structure for artists that leaves no trace in a phonogram credit. No party, Tems included, has ever discussed the company publicly in any source this desk could locate.

What this means for artists

The lesson here is not about Tems specifically; it is about what a pre-major-label company usually becomes. Many African artists incorporate a personal company before any label deal exists, often to receive royalties, book shows, or simply give a growing career a bank account. When a major-label or joint-venture deal follows, that first company frequently stops being the entity on the copyright line, whether or not it is formally wound up. Leading Vibe’s continued, unexplained existence on the register, five years active with no filed connection to any release since 2021, is the ordinary shape of that pattern, not an unusual one. For an artist weighing a similar structure, the practical question a deal memo should answer, and that this desk could not answer from the public record for Tems, is what happens to the pre-signing company’s catalogue and its right to future royalties once the new phonogram credit takes over. That answer sits in a contract, not a public filing, and where it is not disclosed, it should be asked for directly rather than assumed.