“Water,” Tyla’s first main label unmarried, had a unprecedented form of alchemy: sultry, cheeky vocals on a moist dancefloor anthem with a refrain so divine that listening to it over and over again was once in reality interesting. The 22-year-old’s lithe mix of amapiano and R&B shot her to apparently rapid ubiquity in the second one part of 2023, as “Water” blasted from streetside subwoofers, thru membership sound programs, and around the TikToks of younger acolytes and attractive dudes. (The tune’s oiled-up video featured Tyla slow-wining as she doused herself with a bottle of agua, accounting partly for the sexy dudes.) A little bit over six months after its free up, “Water” had earned Tyla the Recording Academy’s first-ever Grammy for African Tune Efficiency, edging out international superstars like Burna Boy and Davido, in addition to Asake and Olamide’s well-deserving “Amapiano.” It was once the type of trade anointment—off one giant unmarried, no longer but an album—that aspiring pop stars dream about.
Although amapiano has ascended from South African golf equipment to the worldwide charts, the large attraction of “Water” lies in Tyla’s voice, which turns out attuned to fresh R&B in the similar method that Rihanna’s debut unmarried “Pon de Replay” was once geared to separate the center between pop and dancehall. Tyla’s pre-“Water” tune, crafted no longer lengthy after she graduated highschool, vulnerable in opposition to the underground; her first unmarried “Getting Overdue,” from 2019, emphasised the sparse interaction between her angelic voice and club-centric 808s. “Been Considering,” from 2021, had its personal anthemic refrain and a artful interpolation of Nelly’s “Sizzling in Herre,” showing her admiration for Y2K-era radio hits on a rhythm whose lineage threaded thru South African kwaito and again to any other diasporic style, UK funky.
On her debut album Tyla, she flexes her constancy to pop-R&B, weaving thru its lingua franca—appeal to dangerous boys, puzzlement over dangerous boys, and in any case the cathartic elation of transferring on. It is helping that the album pulses with amapiano’s log-drum heartbeat, with Wizkid collaborator and “Water” manufacturer Sammy SoSo co-helming maximum tracks and combing them to silky fluidity. The terrain is acquainted however Tyla is playful inside of it, as on “Breathe Me,” a tune about intercourse with a paramedic analogy (“Mouth to mouth while you’re touching me/Open up child I’ll fill your lungs/CPR”) and a song-length meditation on how Tyla’s frame is worthy of a high-end gallery (“ART”).
She’s a savvy singer, able to a complete belt whilst most commonly living within the realm of sensuous breathiness, which provides her songs the air of an interior monologue. The vocal intimacy betrays her influences—she’s studied the Aaliyah canon—and her rendition is dedicated however cool, like she’s making a song from the again of the membership and hasn’t but got rid of her sun shades. In “On and On,” the Babygirlest of those tracks in identify and execution, she unwinds the refrain as even though whispering a secret, her simple melisma slinking during the bass.
