South African global pop star Tyla is living the dream she tweeted about in 2021: to be the biggest pop star in the world from South Africa.
Sitting on the phone from Portugal after performing at Afro Nation, the 24-year-old sounds relaxed, present, and very much like the girl who used to post covers online from Johannesburg.
“I’ve always wanted to be a pop star,” she tells OkayAfrica. “Now that things are changing — the world is changing — I’m seeing how our South African music is so popular and infectious. Me being this pop star is such an exciting thing.”
It’s been a whirlwind three years since “Water” won her a Grammy in 2024 and introduced her sound to the world. That breakout threatened to box her into one genre — amapiano, or what some called ‘popiano.’ But Tyla’s music since has refused to sit still.
Three weeks before our call, she made a surprise appearance at DJ Shimza’s residency at Pacha Ibiza, dipping into Afro-house. Her new album A_POP is even wider in scope.
The follow-up to 2024’s Grammy-winning TYLA, A_POP has become national news back home. In the week after release, fans organized listening parties across South Africa and tagged Sony demanding “tickets.” Abroad, she’s been moving between London, New York, Los Angeles and Paris promoting it.
“I’ve definitely expanded through the making of this album,” Tyla says. “I really wanted to try everything that I’ve always wanted to try, to play with not only writers and producers, but also my voice. Seeing what else I could do. With this one, I just wanted to make something that I’ve never done.”
The album opens with “Is It Love,” where the emotional stakes are set immediately. “is it love if you don’t cry?” she asks, turning romance into something that hurts and heals at once. At 2:22, she holds a note that feels like it could lift the roof. It’s vulnerable, but not soft. “learn my body inside-out” follows, a clear claim to pleasure on her terms.
On “Right Now,” she’s breathy and unhurried: “Say now, I know that you miss me, but you play it down.” It’s a friends-with-benefits song with plausible deniability built into every line.
“[‘Right Now’] was such an exciting song to write because everyone really brought something to it,” she says. Writers like Bibi Bourelly and producer P2J are credited, but Tyla says the process is never formulaic.
“It literally depends on the room, the people, on whether someone sends me something that’s done and I want to work on it. I always move with what excites me. I only work on things that make me feel something the first time I hear it.”
Then there’s the other Tyla: the untouchable it-girl. On “Chanel” she raps, “self-made bitch, yeah, ain’t upgrade me waistline crazy, mandem chase me.” On “That Girl,” it’s all excess: “who’s that girl about to make a purchase / I’m talking diamonds, not just purses.”
She didn’t expect “That Girl” to hit the way it did. “First time I heard it, I was like, that’s cool. But then we were in London, having a little kickback in the studio, and people played it a few times, and I was like, wait! I knew, now this has something in it.”
The big question for a pop star from the Global South is always: how much of home do you bring with you? Tyla answers it directly.Crazy Of Me” with MaWhoo is commercial house, the kind she grew up hearing in South Africa. The log drum is there, but subtle. By the end, the crowd chant kicks in: “yebo, yebo, yebo” — the kind of call-and-response that erupts in a dance cipher back home.
“I Don’t Care” with Babalwa M doubles down on that energy. Earlier, “Chanel” acts as the bridge between global pop ambition and South African sound
“I was with my family. We were going to Durban on the 5 AM bus from Park Station,” she remembers. “Someone has a chicken in a crate. My aunt is there; she gets in a fight with someone. And it’s just a lot. But at the same time I have earphones on, and I’m listening to ‘Fairytale.’”
She’d wanted to rework the song for years. Then she saw on Instagram that Liquideep were back together. “I was like, guys, let’s find a way to get them to come through.” They met at the Cradle outside Johannesburg, re-recorded the vocals, added new ad-libs, and turned it into a duet.
Ziyon from Liquideep later said in an interview: “She talked about how she feels the song is a classic, and how she’s grown up on the music. My head is exploding. I told Ryzor, there’s not gonna be any imposter syndrome in this. They’re calling us because we’re supposed to be here.
Underneath the pop machine — festival stages, fashion houses, studio sessions across three continents — Tyla is still carrying home with her.Sometimes I struggle to find food that I actually like, so I travel with as many South African sauces, spices, and seasonings as I can,” she laughs.
And back home, the love is loud. Shekhinah said she “woke her neighbors up” with A_POP. Zoë Modiga called it “delicious, scrumptious work.”
The conversation around Tyla also keeps returning to identity. In a recent Apple Music interview, she again explained being both Coloured and Black — what in South Africa is understood through Steve Biko’s expanded definition of Blackness that included Coloured and Indian people under apartheid. She answers graciously, every time.
“There’s so much I still want to do,” she says. “The world is so big, and there’s so much that I want to touch while I’m here. It’s crazy that we’re still breaking records of, like, ‘the first African that.’ It’s still fresh, and I just feel like it’s going to be so much bigger as the years go by.”
“I don’t like thinking about it, to be honest. I don’t know what it’s going to be. I will never know what that is going to be.”What she does know is the goal she set for herself as a teenager: to be an African pop star in the way other pop stars have been made.
“My goal was to be an African pop star, because I never felt like I saw that being done. My goal was to be that example.”
From posting covers in Joburg to headlining Afro Nation and topping charts with A_POP, Tyla isn’t just representing South Africa on the global stage. She’s redefining what a pop star can look and sound like — and bringing her sauces, her chants, and her city with her
