Lagos has episodes that tell you exactly where the future is heading. ‘72 Hours in Lagos’, the short film released through Tems’ Leading Vibe Initiative (LVI) in collaboration with Native Instruments, is one of those moments. It follows three emerging producers, Saszy Afroshii, TinyBraz, and Gbots, through a three-day stretch of work, rest, doubt, excitement, and everything in between. The film is compact, but it captures something big which is the shift happening in Nigerian music, especially for young women who are building careers behind the boards.
Tems has spoken openly about teaching herself production in school, leaning on YouTube videos, borrowed equipment, and whatever tools she could find. LVI is her attempt to widen the path for others. Native Instruments supplied resources while LVI supplied mentorship, and the short film brings the whole experiment into focus. The three producers featured in the documentary represent different corners of the city’s creative scene. Saszy Afroshii has worked on several mainstream records and speaks in the film about Lagos as a place that shapes how she builds rhythm. TinyBraz works from a small home setup and describes the pressure to fit into a narrow idea of what a female producer should look or sound like. Gbots found herself in moments where the room held only men, and the expectation was that she would remain quiet. She didn’t. She eventually co-founded We Are ProducHERS, a community for women in production.
Their stories land with clarity because the film refuses to over-dramatize them, and Lagos becomes part of their process, but never in a romanticized way. The film shows the city as it is, busy, energetic, and chaotic, the same environment that Tems and so many others grew in. Tems appears throughout the project in a way that feels observational rather than instructional. She listens more than she speaks, and when she does speak, the emphasis is always on access. She says she wanted LVI to be “a place where women in music don’t have to figure everything out alone.” That idea comes through clearly in the film’s structure. The producers work independently, but the initiative itself provides a framework that many emerging artists go years without finding.
There is something grounded about the way 72 Hours in Lagos is edited. It gives each producer room to articulate her process without squeezing her into a singular narrative. The film doesn’t try to prove a point but rather documents one. There is progress happening in real time, shaped by talent, persistence, and a city that demands both.
Earlier this year, Tems expanded the Leading Vibe Initiative by hosting an in-person programme for young women across Lagos. Twenty participants received equipment training, songwriting sessions, and mentorship from established producers. The interest was immediate, and the waiting list grew quickly. The need for something like this had been clear for years; LVI gave it structure.
The larger significance of the film sits in the backdrop. Women still occupy a small fraction of production credits globally, and in Nigeria, the numbers fall even lower. 72 Hours in Lagos does not claim to solve that imbalance, but it offers a working model for how to shift it. It shows that support systems do more than inspire, they change outcomes.
There will be bigger versions of this story, more editions of LVI, more producers coming into the industry with access their predecessors never had. When Tems says she created the initiative so young women “can see what is possible,” she is describing the heart of the project rather than a tagline. The work is consistent. The intention is long-term. 72 Hours in Lagos is an introduction, and the producers featured are still in the early stages of careers that will develop in their own ways. What Tems has built gives them more room to grow and more control over how they do it.
The ripple effects will show over time. For now, the documentary stands as a clear marker of a scene evolving through collaboration, visibility, and access — the things that often determine who makes it to the next stage and who never gets the chance. Tems wanted to open the door wider, and the film shows what happens when people walk through it.
@black_ranter
