Biography
@TinieTempah
Tinie Tempah was born Patrick Junior Chukwuemeka Okogwu, in South East London. He has three younger siblings, two sisters and one brother. His upbringing in the city kept the rapper motivated, once saying - “London is one of the only places in the world where you can live in a council block and see a beautiful semi-detached house across the street.”
In 2006, Tinie released his song Tears which had a lot of air time on specialist music station, Channel AKA. In 2007 he released his first mixtape. It consisted of 28 songs and had collaborations with artists such as G Unit and Chipmunk.
His break as a musician came when Sony used one of his tracks, Listen to the Vibe for use on the game Wipeout Pure on the PSP. This lead to a promotional European tour that Dizzee Rascal was also on.
Tinie and his cousin/manager Dumi Oburota founded the label, Disturbing London as a way to promote Tinie’s music and help other young, struggling artists.
After being spotted at Wireless festival in 2009, he was later signed to Parlophone Records that October. To celebrate he ran a competition on his blog where the winner would join him for High Tea at Claridges. Fancy.
His debut single Pass Out was released in early 2010 and went straight to number one. His second single, Frisky debuted at number two in the charts. He had his second number one later on in September with his third single, Written in the Stars.
During 2010, Tinie supported Rihanna and Mr Hudson, played on the pyramid stage with Snoop Dogg at Glastonbury and gigged at Radio One’s Big Weekend, the Summertime Ball, T4 on the Beach and Wireless Festival. What a busy boy.
In late 2010, he embarked on his first UK tour, winning two MOBO awards along the way. He released two further singles, Invincible, featuring Kelly Rowland and Wonderman, featuring Ellie Goulding. His next UK arena tour kicked off in early 2011, supported by acts such as Nero and Labrinth. Tinie's album, Disc-overy was officially released in October 2010.
In June 2012 Tempah played the Hackney weekend, performing two of his new songs, Mosh Pit and Drinking From The Bottle. Tinie also played a part in the Olympics Closing ceremony in August that year performing his hit song Written in the Stars alongside Jessie J and Taio Cruz.
His second album, Demonstration is due for release in late 2012. There are reportedly a lot of collaborations on the track list, including, Chris Martin, Dizzee Rascal, The Script and Gary Barlow.
The rapper has been linked to Nicole Scherzinger, Georgia Salpa and Jessie J.