The South African singer’s star-making debut is a lithe, contemporary take on pop-R&B that pulses with the log-drum heartbeat of amapiano.
“Water,” Tyla’s first major label single, had a rare sort of alchemy: sultry, cheeky vocals on a humid dancefloor anthem with a chorus so divine that hearing it over and over was actually appealing. The 22-year-old’s lithe blend of amapiano and R&B shot her to seemingly instant ubiquity in the second half of 2023, as “Water” blasted from streetside subwoofers, through club sound systems, and across the TikToks of young acolytes and horny dudes. (The song’s oiled-up videofeatured Tyla slow-wining as she doused herself with a bottle of agua, accounting in part for the horny dudes.) A little over six months after its release, “Water” had earned Tyla the Recording Academy’s first-ever Grammy for African Music Performance, edging out global superstars like Burna Boyand Davido, as well as Asake and Olamide’s well-deserving “Amapiano.” It was the kind of industry anointment—off one big single, not yet an album—that aspiring pop stars dream about.
Though amapiano has ascended from South African clubs to the global charts, the broad appeal of “Water” lies in Tyla’s voice, which seems attuned to contemporary R&B in the same way that Rihanna’s debut single “Pon de Replay” was geared to split the middle between pop and dancehall. Tyla’s pre-“Water” music, crafted not long after she graduated high school, inclined towards the underground; her first single “Getting Late,” from 2019, emphasized the sparse interplay between her angelic voice and club-centric 808s. “Been Thinking,” from 2021, had its own anthemic chorus and a clever interpolation of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” displaying her admiration for Y2K-era radio hits on a rhythm whose lineage threaded through South African kwaito and back to another diasporic genre, UK funky.
On her debut album Tyla, she flexes her fidelity to pop-R&B, weaving through its lingua franca—attraction to bad boys, puzzlement over bad boys, and finally the cathartic elation of moving on. It helps that the album pulses with amapiano’s log-drum heartbeat, with Wizkid collaborator and “Water” producer Sammy SoSo co-helming most tracks and brushing them to silky fluidity. The terrain is familiar but Tyla is playful within it, as on “Breathe Me,” a song about sex with a paramedic analogy (“Mouth to mouth when you’re touching me/Open up baby I’ll fill your lungs/CPR”) and a song-length meditation on how Tyla’s body is worthy of a high-end gallery (“ART”).
She’s a savvy singer, capable of a full belt while mostly residing in the realm of sensuous breathiness, which gives her songs the air of an internal monologue. The vocal intimacy betrays her influences—she’s studied the Aaliyah canon—and her rendition is committed but cool, like she’s singing from the back of the club and hasn’t yet removed her sunglasses. In “On and On,” the Babygirlest of these tracks in name and execution, she unwinds the chorus as though whispering a secret, her easy melisma slinking through the bass.
On “No. 1,” Nigerian star Tems drops in with a welcome jolt, her vocal power contrasting with Tyla’s charming effervescence. “Jump,” with Atlanta rapper Gunna and St. Thomas dancehall deejay Skillibeng, is a black-light banger that slinks “from Jozi to Ibiza,” though I’m begging for an edit without Gunna rhyming “Put some carats in your ear” with “Wanna put it in her rear.” (Perhaps I’m just “in the wrong place with the right energy,” as Tyla sings on the lovely, flange-drenched Afropop track “Priorities.”)
Gunna’s presence in general is a bit confusing, suggesting the shadow hand of a music conglomerate, as is an appearance by Becky G, singing in Spanglish over the delectable “On My Body,” which showcases amapiano’s deep house influence; it sounds great, but what’s the connection other than to create an avenue into the lucrative “Latin music” market? Meanwhile, “Girl Next Door,” Tyla’s excellent 2023 collab with Beninese-Nigerian singer Ayra Starr, is nowhere to be found. But this is the kind of decentralization that occurs upon reaching the mainstream, even while being nestled in a very specific sound—the preordained path of a gifted young musician who became a near-instant star.
