Paramount’s new Children of Blood and Bone trailer came out on November 12 with a Tems song running under it, and with it came the first full look at the soundtrack she has been building as the film’s executive music producer since July. That song, “African Love Story,” is the first of three Tems originals written for the film, and it arrives November 20.
The guest list runs from Burna Boy, Fireboy DML, BNXN and Ayra Starr, who also makes her film acting debut in it, to Obongjayar, Pa Salieu, Moonchild Sanelly, Show Dem Camp, Moelogo, Daecolm and Kold AF.
Gina Prince-Bythewood, who directed the film and co-wrote it with Tomi Adeyemi, has said the job grew out of her writing playlist. Two songs played on repeat while she worked on the script: Tems’ “Try Me,” which she heard as Zélie, the heroine Thuso Mbedu plays, and Burna Boy’s “Alone,” which she heard as Damson Idris’s Inan. “Alone” was Burna’s song for Wakanda Forever, so one Black fantasy blockbuster’s album helped write the next one. “Just having those songs play on a loop for me as I wrote, it just became embedded into the DNA of the film,” Prince-Bythewood said in August. Licensing a record stopped being enough for her: “I want Tems to curate the soundtrack because I love her work so much.” Burna signed on beside her as executive music consultant.
The names Tems called say a lot about the ear she’s curating with. Prince-Bythewood has described a writing camp in Ghana with producers GuiltyBeatz and P2J, where songs were made for specific scenes. Putting Show Dem Camp and Pa Salieu next to Fireboy and Ayra stretches the album well past the Lagos pop A-list, out to rap from Lagos and Coventry and to South Africa through Moonchild Sanelly.
Marvel is the obvious yardstick. Kendrick Lamar curated the 2018 Black Panther album, while Ryan Coogler’s Proximity Media executive produced the Wakanda Forever album and Ludwig Göransson produced it, bringing Tems in as a voice, singing “No Woman, No Cry” and sharing writing credit on Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up.” Four years on, she picks the voices. Prince-Bythewood called her “the first woman to do this, which is staggering,” and gave her own verdict on the finished record: “There are no skips on this,” she said in an August interview.
Terence Blanchard is writing the film’s score separately, and Children of Blood and Bone opens in US cinemas on January 15, 2027.