Tyla on Becoming a Global Phenomenon, Her South African Roots, and What’s Next

The night before the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Tyla was unusually calm. The South African singer was about to give a surprise performance at the Prelude to the Olympics, held at the Fondation Louis Vuitton and attended by celebrities from Zendaya to LeBron James. “I was asked to do the event by Pharrell [Williams, Louis Vuitton Men’s creative director], so it was insane—an instant ‘Yes,’” she says. “Sometimes I’m nervous, like I’m really nervous.” But this time, Tyla looked forward to the show the entire day. She dressed in an oversize black and yellow jersey from Louis Vuitton Men’s yet-to-be-released spring 2025 collection, over spandex shorts and thigh-high boots, and performed four songs, including her runaway hit “Water.” “I felt hot,” she says with a smile. “When I got on, I knew it was going to be that type of crowd: professional, don’t dance much. But regardless, I had so much fun.” Tyla teased the VIP audience as she sang: “I even called them out onstage like, ‘You guys are stiff.’”

Days before, Tyla had been in London, where she was in rehearsal for upcoming shows—including Chicago’s Lollapalooza, her first big music festival in the United States—and making both a deluxe album of her self-titled debut EP and new music. At 22, she has had one of the fastest, most explosive rises in music—a true African pop star with a following that spans much of the world. “I just started seeing stars,” Ezekiel Lewis, president of Tyla’s label, Epic Records, says of first seeing a video of her performing. “It was a grand opportunity to help collaborate and make something truly original.”

Dress, Dior Haute Couture.

Just a couple of years ago, the singer, born Tyla Laura Seethal, was in high school in her hometown, the sprawling, dynamic city of Johannesburg, where she grew up on the east side. As a little girl, she posted videos of herself covering pop songs by the likes of Justin Bieber. When she started making music in high school, she experimented by mixing genres from R&B to pop with her foremost love: amapiano, South African house music. When she heard the log drums of the song “Iskhathi (Gonggong)” by Kwiish SA at the age of 14, she was seduced. “When amapiano would come on, we would see everybody’s moves just change. Seeing the energy of it…it felt so spiritual,” she tells me. “I always wanted to mix it with other styles that I enjoy, like R&B and pop—and make it my own.” It was frustrating to watch her country’s unique music, from amapiano to kwaito house, go unnoticed by the rest of the world. “I felt it was so special, and it needed to be shared. I did my own version of it in hopes of getting people to go deeper and discover the other artists we have and the origins of my sound.”

Gown, Armani Privé. 

Parka dress, gloves, Balenciaga Couture 53RD Collection.

Tyla’s family encouraged her. Her mom, who was creative and did everything from making jewelry and candles to selling chocolate and real estate, told her she could sing. Her aunt, a professional dancer, taught her how to belly dance when she was small. And her grandmother told her stories of her days in singing competitions, back when she was vying for money and packets of cigarettes. “I was inspired. She would always push me. She’d make me sing a song 20 times until I got it right,” Tyla says.

Tyla was precocious, and she knew she wanted to be a pop star. She auditioned for all the school plays, but singing was her dream. “It’s something I always really wanted, for myself, and for Africa, and for the world. Something different, something original,” she tells me. “I also just wanted to dress up. I’m not always inspirational, guys!”

Bodysuit, Dior Haute Couture.

Though she now finds some of the videos she uploaded to the internet “cringey,” she saw it as fun then, an outlet for her artistic impulses. When she started recording her own music during her final year of high school, it was hard to get used to singing in a studio, but exciting. “I heard myself on a song—I said, ‘There’s no way I’m not gonna do this.’ It felt like I was supposed to do it. Even though that song was not the best,” she says, laughing. Her parents wanted her to continue her education after high school, but eventually they came around. To this day, Tyla sends her music first to the family group chat before it’s released anywhere else. On her parents’ first trip to the United States, Tyla won a Grammy. “They came backstage after I won; my mom was crying. Because it’s so surreal,” she says.

Many things have felt surreal, not least seeing her gently intoxicating single “Water” become a global phenomenon, complete with its own viral hip-rolling dance, a play on South Africa’s Bacardi dance. (During the holidays last year, I was at a beach party on Kenya’s coast as a crowd of people did it together.) Its release has been followed by collaborations with Summer Walker (a “Girls Need Love” remix), Tems (“No.1”), and rapper Travis Scott on the “Water” remix. “Initially we weren’t going to have a remix, but after Travis asked, I was like, ‘Duh,’” Tyla says. “Whenever I get people mentioning that they want to collab, and it’s people that I’ve listened to all my life and been a fan of—again, I just message the family group chat. I get so genuinely excited,” she says. “It’s like, ‘Yes—like, yes, yes, yes.’”

Bodysuit, skirt, Schiaparelli Haute Couture.

Cape, bodysuit, Chanel Haute Couture.

The current embrace of African cultures by American artists and listeners has been rapid and meaningful. I remember smiling in disbelief when I first heard Nigerian star Burna Boy on Hot 97 years ago in New York; in 2023, he became the first African artist to sell out a U.S. stadium. “I heard it wasn’t cool to be African in America, and I didn’t really know until I started being on social media in school,” Tyla says. She’d go live only to sometimes be met with derogatory names. “Then I realized it [being African] wasn’t welcome. I love that now people are showing more love and being more open to it and learning more about it. And just enjoying the music.

Top, skirt, earring, Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture by Nicolas Di Felice.

Tyla’s first single, the bouncy, flirty “Getting Late,” in 2019, was her initial try at what she calls “popiano,” her blend of amapiano and pop. She gained fans in South Africa in 2020 with the video for “Getting Late,” which now has more than 10 million views on YouTube. But her rise during the lead-up to her debut album, Tyla, seemed to happen simultaneously around the African continent, the United States, and other parts of the world. Before the album dropped in March, Tyla had become the first South African solo artist to reach the Billboard Hot 100 since the legendary Hugh Masekela, 55 years earlier, and the first winner of the new Grammy category Best African Music Performance for “Water.” Not to mention starring in her first big fashion campaign, for Gap.

The day after her Paris set, she is serene and self-assured at the cover shoot for this magazine, surrounded by stylists, managers, publicists, and assistants. She speaks softly but firmly in her Johannesburg accent as she asks the same question throughout the day: “But does it look like me?” She later tells me, after shooing her team out of the dressing room, that there’s a reason she’s so hands-on. “I’m very involved in everything that I do: my sound, my image, what I wear, what I look like. It does matter, and it does matter that it goes with how I’m feeling, and it ties in with the music. Because at the end of the day, I’m an artist. I model, but it’s on the side.”

Coat, Armani Privé.

After the shoot wraps, Tyla gets into a van, curling up on the back seat in a gray T-shirt and sheer tights and scrolling on her phone. When we get back to her hotel, we head to a top-floor lounge and spread out on cushions, using towels as blankets. Tyla is still recovering from a back injury, and wanted to lie down after being on her feet all day. Modeling felt “awkward” to her at first. “But I realized that if there’s a bad shot, we’ll get a good one. I’m more comfortable making mistakes,” she says, adding that that approach applies to her music, too: “Being able to just go in the booth, sing a bunch of melodies—and some of them come out bad, some of them are amazing. Just being open to not being perfect all the time.” Tyla wants people who listen to her music to feel that it’s not “commercial, what we hear everywhere,” and to hear the presence of her culture. Something fresh, not calculated.

Dress, earrings, Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda.

“Another thing about South African music: There can be a depressing song, but the beat just makes you wanna dance. So I also like incorporating that in my stuff. While you’re crying, dance and shake your ass at the same time,” she says with a laugh. Whenever she listens to the amapiano song “Healer Ntliziyo Yam,” for instance, she cries. “I know what I like,” Tyla says. “I know what I wanna look like. I know what is cool, especially now. I trust my judgment, and yeah, I love collaborating with people and going outside of my comfort zone, but not too far off where it feels like something I wouldn’t do. If I don’t like it, I’m not going to do it.”

Veil, Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture by Nicolas Di Felice.

Her “sweaty,” beachy style—short skirts, mini shirts, and crop tops showing her belly ring—evolved from her time spent in the South African coastal city of Durban, where her parents are from. It’s warm and humid, and Tyla was usually on the beach in a bikini. Her distressed, ripped looks came from her first performances, when she couldn’t afford to buy new outfits; she and her best friend took clothes and cut them up. “It literally came from us just making it work,” she says. “Making hot outfits from whatever we had.”

When Tyla is in Johannesburg, she likes staying at home to spend time with her brother and sisters—her “best friends”—and watching movies. But when she does go out, she’s in the township of Soweto. “That’s where the real parties are,” she explains. “In lockdown, you weren’t really allowed to have parties, but there’d be these parties where they would let us in, and then they’d have to close the doors until the curfew ended. You’d have to stay in there until morning. And when police would come, we’d have to be quiet, act like nothing’s happening. Then the party would come back.” With a shrug, she adds, “South Africans just love music.”

Corset dress, gloves, tights, Schiaparelli Haute Couture. Pumps, Christian Louboutin.

Reflecting on her wild year, she says, “I do feel like I’ve changed a lot in the span of a few months; people may not see it. I’m excited to see that in my next album.” She describes that change as starting to detach from what people say or think about her, after feeling annoyed at constant comparisons to Rihanna and “I’m a Slave 4 U”-era Britney Spears. “Initially I used to care. Recently I’ve just been feeling, ‘They’re gonna say what they wanna say, and it doesn’t even matter because I know it’s not that,’” Tyla says. She posts less, and sometimes deletes social media apps from her phone for a week at a time.

Cape, bra top, shorts, Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda.

“This year was me introducing myself. Next year I’m just gonna have fun,” she says. “Do whatever, wear whatever. I’m just playing around a lot, and bringing a lot of my roots into my music. It’s still gonna be me, still sweaty vibes, but evolved.”

This story appears in the October 2024 issue of ELLE.

GET THE LATEST ISSUE OF ELLE

Alexis Okeowo, a staff writer at the New Yorker, was named journalist of the year by the Newswomen’s Club of New York in 2020. Okeowo is author of A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa, which received the 2018 PEN Open Book Award, and of Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama, which comes out in 2025.