Tyla has come a long way from the quiet life she remembers in South Africa before Water changed everything. On A*POP, that journey isn’t just part of the story surrounding the album. It feels like the foundation of the entire project.
Three years after Water became a global phenomenon and earned Tyla the first Grammy for Best African Music Performance, the South African star returns with her second album, sounding more certain of who she is and what she wants to represent.
The title itself points toward her ambition to expand the idea of what an African pop star can look and sound like. Rather than allowing outside expectations to define her identity, Tyla embraces the complexity of being African while refusing to squeeze herself into a single musical or cultural box.
The breathy vocals and playful sensuality that helped define Tyla’s earlier work remain firmly in place, but A*POP feels more intentional in the way it connects those qualities to her South African roots. The album leans heavily into collaborations with artists from her home country, making the project feel less like a global pop record borrowing from Africa and more like African pop stepping confidently onto the global stage.
CHANEL arrives with the kind of hypnotic energy that makes it easy to imagine becoming another major Tyla moment, while THAT GIRL turns up the flirtation as she pulls a lover closer with a sleek, sensual approach. Then there’s FAIRYTALE, where Tyla reimagines a 2009 anthem from South African house duo Liquideep, connecting her contemporary sound to an important part of her country’s musical history.
The Zara Larsson collaboration on SHE DID IT AGAIN adds another dimension to the project, standing out as the exception to the album’s strong South African collaborative focus. The track’s Britney Spears reference also shows that Tyla isn’t interested in pretending her global pop influences don’t exist. Instead, she folds them into a distinctly African perspective.
Tyla has already experienced the dizzying transition from being a relatively unknown singer in South Africa to touring internationally, performing at Coachella and sharing a World Cup opening ceremony stage with Future. That kind of exposure could easily push an artist toward chasing whatever the world expects next.
A*POP is an album about widening the definition of African pop without losing the personal qualities that made Tyla stand out in the first place. The amapiano, pop and R&B foundation remains, but the project’s strongest statement is cultural rather than purely musical. Tyla isn’t asking whether she fits someone else’s idea of African enough. She’s creating her own answer.
And perhaps that’s the biggest difference between the Tyla who arrived with Water and the artist heard here. The newcomer who once imagined the music industry as all excitement and possibility has now seen the pressure that comes with global success. She has learned that staying herself requires intention.
This is Tyla embracing her South African identity, expanding her musical world and challenging the idea that African pop has to follow a particular formula. She doesn’t need to choose between being African and being global. A*POP makes the case that the two can exist together, beautifully and unapologetically.
With A*POP, Tyla delivers sensual, playful pop that expands the possibilities of what African pop can be.
