Billed as one of 2024’s breakthrough artists by leading music tastemakers, Tyla’s rise to the top has been fascinating. Her success has come at a time when the industry has been churning out no shortage of Pop Princesses – Dua Lipa, Sabrina Carpenter, to name a few – but on Tyla’s self-titled debut album, her unique pop-amapiano style showed why she’s able to set herself apart from other music stars of the moment.
Tyla, which was released in March 2024, came after the South African artist spent years building a global reputation. If 2019’s debut single ‘Getting Late’ helped showcase Tyla as a playful pop ingenue with an ear towards making TikTok-friendly hits, then 2023’s single ‘Water’ showed that she had all but perfected this art form. By the time the artist announced to the world that her debut album was finished, her place as an emergent star was absolutely assured.
But the road to Tyla wasn’t as quick as it might’ve initially seemed, at least according to the artist herself. Since signing a contract with Epic Records in 2021, Tyla spent the better part of two-and-a-half years going back and forth to recording sessions in South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Jamaica, Nigeria, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The intention was for Tyla to develop formal studio-recording experience, so that her debut LP would sound like the real thing when it was released. These years also saw Tyla team up with producers Sammy SoSo, Ari PenSmith, Believve, and Mocha Bands, who went on to have the lion’s share of production credits on the album itself.
Even as she undertook her studio-recording education during these years, Tyla’s career – and fanbase – skyrocketed. Buoyed by a support slot on Chris Brown’s Under The Influence world tour, and by the monumental social media success of 2023’s ‘Water’, Tyla was already being touted as this generation’s answer to Rihanna or Aaliyah.
The momentum helped Tyla become the success story her management team had by then expected it to be. The album reached the Top 20 in countries like the UK, Norway, Netherlands, and New Zealand, but also in places like Tunisia and Papua New Guinea – showing Tyla’s global appeal.
Much of the praise was rightly bestowed on Tyla for perfecting her self-proclaimed “popiano” sound – a neo-genre that blends elements of amapiano (a type of house music that became popular in South Africa) with pop stylings and catchy, modern-day R&B.
‘Popiano’ serves as both the unique music style-of-choice (Tyla’s songs sound distinctive from other pop-R&B songs of the day, which is a tricky feat in and of itself) and the access point for those looking to understand Tyla as a pop icon. With this genre, she announces her South African credentials to her audience, and this becomes her USP.
On Tyla’s first song, ‘Intro’, for example, she swaps a few lines, spoken in Zulu, with South African DJ Kelvin Momo. It’s not only a brief intro to her album – it’s also a brief intro to her culture.
This sets us up nicely for the 13 songs that follow. Tyla is a supremely polished pop album, with cross-cultural versatility, and hits galore to back things up.
Second track ‘Safer’ allows the listener to dive into the intriguing way Tyla can be both earnest and laidback as a singer, with wavy vocals, strong lyrics about the fear of committing (“I know that it’s danger, I know I’m safer runnin’”) and intriguing production – including those irresistible log drum beats.
‘Water’, the already mega-successful single, comes next. It’s more of a standard pop hit – closer to Destiny’s Child than to anything entirely original – but it’s useful for exemplifying how Tyla’s voice can tackle both the low and the high notes. It’s also an earworm of a song, with its lyrics offering the right level of risque sexual innuendo (You can get away with singing it in public, as long as no one reads too much into the lyrics).
On ‘Truth Or Dare’, delicate guitar riffs serve as a counterweight to the track’s bass-heavy production, while on ‘No. 1’, Nigerian artist Tems serves as a counterweight to Tyla’s light, floating voice.
By ‘Breathe Me’, things are in danger of growing repetitive. The small problem of this album is that it’s sometimes a victim of its own perfection; the popiano frequently sounds so good that you stop paying much attention.
It takes the next song, ‘Butterflies’, to change the pace and reset your attention. The song is very similar to the floaty (no pun intended) hip-hop/R&B sound of Ariana Grande, and you imagine this similarity was deliberate.
‘Jump’, the final single to be released from the album, is one of those lyrical treasure troves that so many emerging pop stars wish they could mine; it’s chock-full of instantly Instagrammable lines, with most of them found in the pre-chorus: “From Jozi to Ibiza…Feel my body bangin’ like speaker/Ooh, sweatin’ out my concealer…my face card make ’em feel weaker/But you know that my body is a healer.”
Many of Tyla’s unexpected highlights are left to the end, which is a pleasant surprise. ‘A.R.T.’ is an absolutely beautiful song about sensuality and devotion; ‘Priorities’ features a highlife guitar riff that’s so pleasing it moves us from R&B to the realms of psychedelia; and, similarly, ‘To Last’ offers synth sounds that drive the ampiano to bold new places.
Not everything is strong, however. ‘On My Body’, featuring Becky G, sounds more forgettable than it should (especially considering it features another of this generation’s biggest stars). Indeed, you could argue that most of the features on the album – Skillibeng on ‘Jump’ and Travis Scott on the ‘Water’ remix – don’t justify their reason for being there.
This is all to say that Tyla is the clear highlight. And, as far as debut albums go, Tyla has indisputably set her up to be one of the biggest names in pop music – for the current generation at least.
