Tinie Tempah barred from his own party

British rapper Tinie Tempah realised he had yet to really make it in America when he was refused entry to his own afterparty following a concert in the U.S. The Written in the Stars hitmaker has become one of Britain’s biggest urban artists in recent years, scooping two honours at the 2011 Brit Awards and achieving a nomination for the prestigious Mercury Prize with his debut album Disc-Overy.
Despite frequent attempts to crack the U.S. charts, the rapper remains largely unknown Stateside – a fact rammed home in embarrassing fashion when security guards at a post-gig party failed to recognise him.
Tempah tells U.K. talk show host Graham Norton, “We were trying to break America so everything was scaled back. Weeks before I had been performing for between 10 and 15 thousand people (in Britain) and there I was standing on a bar in the middle of the day performing to three or four people.
“After one gig, I tried to get into the aftershow and I wasn’t allowed in. To make it worse they were playing one of my songs in the background. It was horrible.”