This story originally appeared in i-D’s The Summer! Issue, no. 372, Summer 2023. Order your copy here.
Tyla always knew she wanted to be huge. As a kid, she was already a popstar-in-training: constantly pestering her mum to take pictures of her, gracing her family with intimate living room concerts, or recording belly dancing videos just for fun. “Baby Tyla was probably the most dramatic baby that ever was born,” she laughs. “At school, I was that theatre kid, doing drama and choir, head of culture, just doing everything.” When Tyla’s parents gave in to her pleas to pursue her dream of music for a year before going to university, she spent her days writing songs, recording covers and DM-ing them to her favourite celebs hoping for her big break (Rihanna, check your inbox). Although she didn’t always get a reply back, that didn’t stop her from meeting her now-manager, graduating to recording in a studio and being primed and ready to show the world exactly what she’s made of.
Rising to notoriety with her viral music video “Getting Late” featuring Kooldrink in 2021, the doe-eyed 21-year-old singer never could have predicted the response that would follow her debut. “[By the point] we released it, it was doing well in South Africa,” she explains. “I had a social media presence so there were TikTok challenges. But then it really took off when we did the video, like crazy, past all my expectations. It was like zero to one hundred.” Effortlessly aligning influences, from the kinetic energy of her home country’s electronic dance scene to the catchiness of Western pop hooks and the sultry smooth nature of her R&B vocals, made Tyla an instant musical crush for a broad array of internet fans.
That vibrant visual, filled with colour, charisma and ‘pouncing cats’ has since amassed over six million YouTube views, and clips of Tyla’s hypnotising vocals floating over the thumping SA house beat have been circulated all over social media. In its aftermath, a label bidding war ensued and, after signing in the US to Sony’s Epic Records, South Africa’s newest global pop prospect was born.
Two years on and Tyla’s schedule is jam-packed. She tells me that, before all this, she had never left South Africa – but so far this year, she hasn’t been home. Instead, she’s been bouncing across the States, from New York to LA to Miami – and that’s all just in the past week. We hit the 50-email mark of back-and-forth with her team before we’re even able to lock in a time to chat. On the call, I wait 25 minutes before she jumps on, with a bundle of apologies and charms. “I knew it would be difficult, but oh my gosh. All the travelling, early mornings, late nights, the pressure, it’s a lot,” she says. “But it’s also very exciting and I genuinely believe in myself. I trust that I was meant to do this, so the fact that I’m given this opportunity… I’m just super grateful and ready to show people that hey! I got it!”
The self-proclaimed drama queen energy of her youth has morphed into an infectious bubbliness that cuts through – even in the chaos of her hectic jet-lagged itinerary. She jumps animatedly in and out of different voices, punctuating her storytelling with trademark South African exclamations like ‘yho!’, ‘ey!’ and ‘what the heck?’ and repeating lines and words for emphasis. It’s a welcome yet surprising complement to the more polished pop persona that has followed her breakout year. “I don’t think many people know that I’m so not serious!” she laughs. “As a person, I’m very out there, I just love people.”
Raised in a “big, huge family with thousands of aunties and uncles,” Tyla is the middle child of five (she admits that people always assume she’s the youngest, though she can’t figure out why). Alongside music, her family form the heart of her universe. Tyla’s siblings are her best friends, and her earliest memories of music are replaying her dad’s recordings of Michael Jackson and Rihanna concerts on DVD. At family braais (the Afrikaans word for barbecue), her uncle would bring his guitar and she and her cousins would sing songs and dance to the electric slide, a picturesque scene that’s already inspired a song coming soon.
Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa’s influence is also very much at the core of everything Tyla does. “I’m very passionate about my country, our culture and music; I really believe in it,” she says. From the Amapiano chords and log drum heartbeats in her production to the instantly recognisable dance moves woven into the choreography of her visuals, Tyla’s heritage and inherent charisma give her commercial sound a club-ready edge alongside an exhilarating originality. “We’ve been rocking to kwaito and house for a very long time. My teen years were the prime of Amapiano music [in South Africa] and it just came so naturally, we all latched onto it,” she says. “We have this specific bounce and way we dance to it, so I love that I’m able to incorporate that into my music now. I always want to add my culture to it, South Africans have so much sauce!”
Even when it comes to collaboration, Tyla’s sights are set on the highest of heights, and her approach is always continent first: “We have so much talent at home, all we need are the eyes and the opportunities.” Working with fellow African creatives every step of the way is a priority for her. “When we shot the video for “Been Thinking” earlier this year, initially we were supposed to shoot it in America, but I insisted like nah, we have to do it in South Africa,” she tells me. “I really wanted to give that opportunity to South Africans and have South African dancers and just show the culture and be authentic about it.” Directed by Grammy Award-winning Meji Alabi, the result is an electric, ensemble production of bodies and textures that feels at once both underground and massive and earned Tyla comparisons to the likes of Tinashe and Rihanna.
For her latest link-up, Tyla has teamed up with Nigeria’s own pop princess Ayra Starr for her upcoming single “Girl Next Door” which demonstrates a whole new angle to her “melting pot” approach to music. The track is a delicate fusion of Ayra and Tyla’s modern takes on their respective genres from South and West Africa, balancing a breezy Afrobeats melody with the more rhythmic Amapiano drum pulse. “She’s doing so well for herself and I’m just so proud and happy that I’m able to have a song with her, not only because she’s an amazing artist, but because she’s truly a good friend too.”
As someone who’s also routinely been dubbed ‘South Africa’s answer to Ariana Grande’, and with new music on the horizon in EP form, Tyla is excited for the world to get to know her in her own right. “People maybe haven’t seen this before, they like things that are familiar, and want to relate and understand it. Those are amazing comparisons because they’re amazing artists but also I’m Tyla, you know?” What’s to come she describes as “very fresh and very new. The tracks I’ve released so far have very different sounds, so I want to now put them in a body of work. It has a lot of pop and R&B elements but [they] are also very African-influenced because I have to; that’s me!” The agenda for her music is simple: “I just want people to have a good time when they listen to my music, whether the song be slow or fast or sad or happy, I just want them to really feel those emotions and tie it to their own memories.” If she had to bring on some bucket list collaborations to help her in that mission, they’d have to be “Drake, or Doja Cat,” she says. “Her father’s South African so she can’t say no,” she jokes before adding, “or DJ Khaled – I’d love him to scream on one of my songs.”
“I really would love people to be able to say the biggest artist right now is from Africa. You know like born and raised, what the heck? We haven’t had that,” she says, practically buzzing with enthusiasm. The magnitude of her ambition is refreshing, especially in a world of niches and scenes and ‘gatekeeping’. And if her start in this industry just two years ago is anything to go by, she ought to be taken seriously. “As a South African, this type of thing, it wasn’t a reality. That we could actually make a living from it and do well, especially with the dreams I had, it wasn’t a reality… but I just always put myself out there. Since I was young, I had a feeling that this is what I was going to do and it was going to happen. I feel like I was born for it.”
In the meantime, while Tyla’s on the path to world domination, she’s managed to wrangle herself a week off after this trip to go home and visit her family. She beams; the schedule is far less busy than her usual day right now. “I’m gonna sleep in my mother’s bed,” she says with a smile. “I’m gonna chill with my siblings. I’m gonna stay up late, spend time with them and yeah… I’m just gonna do everything and anything that they want to do.”
Credits
Photography Clara Balzary
Fashion Caroline Newell
Hair Tiago Goya using Bumble and bumble
Make-up Sandy Ganzer at Forward Artists
Set design Kelly Infield
Photography assistance Essence Moseley and Annabel Snoxall
Fashion assistance Taylor Hubbard