“Do you mind if I just stay in my robe?” Tyla asks, her slippers already on the floor.
The 23-year-old South African pop star seems even smaller than her 5-foot-3-inch frame as she curls into the corner of a dressing room couch, her knees tucked to her chest, after standing for nearly three hours in front of a camera. It’s 9 p.m. on a Friday in a Manhattan studio, and while the week should be winding down, Tyla isn’t. She cues up her just-released single, “Bliss,” briefly lowering the volume on the song, a mesh of R&B and Afrobeats, so she can more clearly explain the lyrics.
“It’s such a real love song,” she says, acknowledging that its deeply sensual lyrics are “a bit dramatic” (the single’s cover artwork features her drenched in sweat, her head buried in a man’s bare chest). “But they are things I’ve said and felt: ‘I don’t want to live without you.’ It’s so intense … but beautiful. Losing something or someone that I love is probably my biggest fear.”
This intensity is no accident and may have another source of inspiration beyond the obvious romantic bliss: Since the release of her critically revered self-titled debut album last year — and the global success of “Water,” the smash single that started it all — Tyla has been fixated on how to follow it.
It’s no small challenge. The song, built on a foundation of amapiano — a subgenre of South African house music — but infused with pop and R&B melodies and accented by elements of Afrobeats, was unlike anything else on pop radio at the time. Despite the recent success of many African artists, “Water” has a directness that made it a breakthrough song for the diaspora.
It became a near-instant hit after Tyla and her choreographer, Litchi, posted videos of the singer doing a Bacardi-inspired dance on TikTok in August 2023. In it, she glides across the floor while pouring water over her swaying hips and singing, “Make me sweat, make me hotter, make me lose my breath, make me water.” The move went viral, and Tyla did too — everything from her dancing to her look.
Richie Shazam for Variety
Today, she admits that she’s still recalibrating from that unexpected triumph.
“When ‘Water’ happened, I wasn’t ready,” she says. “I became obsessed with the idea of doing things ‘right.’ I wanted more time to make mistakes to fully figure out who I am as an artist, but then things just went … Well, you know.”
We know. “Water” was a major hit in more than 40 countries, reaching the top 10 everywhere from Australia to Romania to South Africa to the U.K. It hit No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S., where Tyla became the highest-charting solo female African artist in the country’s history. In Brazil, the song was even certified two-times diamond (the next — and only — step up after platinum). It was nominated for BET and BRIT and iHeartRadio and Ivor Novello and VMA and Kids’ Choice awards and won a Grammy for best African music performance — all before the release of her debut album.
That momentum has continued. In April, Tyla debuted “Bliss” during her first performance at the Coachella festival (without telling her team in advance), and she released a new four-song EP in late July.
On the heels of that success, Tyla’s quickly become a high-fashion darling, delivering standout red carpet fare — from the custom Balmain sand dress she wore to the 2024 Met Gala to the vintage Roberto Cavalli she wore for the 2024 MTV European Music Awards. She’s had such an impact that Vogue editorial director Anna Wintour made her a member of the 2025 Met Gala host committee.
Directly after this evening’s interview, she’s off to another photo shoot, for her stint hosting the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Earlier in the week, she was again on the Met Gala carpet, this time rocking a pinstripe gown styled by Law Roach and a bleached-blonde pixie cut. Later that evening, she co-hosted Richie Akiva’s swanky afterparty with Doja Cat, Colman Domingo and Edward Enninful.
It’s all a long way from her hometown of Edenvale, South Africa, a village of 70,000 people outside the metropolis of Johannesburg. “What’s happened to me is not a normal thing,” she says. “I don’t think any human could go from where I came from and feel normal about millions of people knowing who you are. I respect the African and South African artists that came before me and literally helped me get here. I’m grateful for everything, and to be able to represent my country is something that I’m so happy to carry.”
* * *
There was a massive tree in the backyard of Tyla’s childhood home in South Africa that she and her siblings — two sisters and a brother — would clamber up and around, turning its branches into props for their superhero fantasies, pretending they had the power to do or be anything. “There was no choice but to entertain ourselves and each other,” Tyla says, her eyes softening at the memory.
Theirs was a isolated adolescence, imposed by their parents, whom she describes as “intentionally strict,” although she’s come to appreciate the discipline. “We weren’t allowed to sleep over or even go to friends’ houses,” she recalls. “But I didn’t mind it terribly; we’d be having so much fun just staying home.”
Born on Jan. 30, 2002, as the second-youngest of the four siblings, Tyla Laura Seethal grew up in a loud, lively, music-filled household. Her father would sing to wake the kids up before school, and on Sundays he’d blast everything from country to R&B radio while cleaning the house. Her mother had multiple occupations, from candle-making to real estate and even acting in commercials.
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Music ran through the extended family, too. “My uncle used to sing all the time,” Tyla recalls. “He was the life of the party, and he’d be capable of just pulling out a guitar in the middle of a crowd and encourage us to sing along.” Her grandmother also had good pipes, competing in local singing competitions when she was younger. “Our house was never quiet, and our neighbors definitely hated us,” she says. “We were all always singing or laughing at the top of our lungs.”
By the time Tyla was 14, she was convinced that she belonged onstage. She and her friends would form impromptu girl groups during recess, turning the playground into their stage. “At break time, we’d tell everyone, ‘There’s a performance here at this time,’” she recalls. Inspired by Destiny’s Child, they’d sing and dance for their classmates, who gathered on the sidelines to watch.
Tyla began posting videos on YouTube, and by the time she was 16, she had built a small online following that caught the attention of FAX Records co-founder Garth von Glehn, who invited her to use his studio to record. With her parents’ reluctant support, Tyla accepted the offer. “In my culture, there’s a heavy emphasis on respecting your elders, and it’s an unspoken [rule] that you can’t question them,” she explains. Her parents gave her a year between high school and college to pursue her dream of a musical career.
“I just remember telling them they could trust me, and they told me all they truly cared about was my safety,” she says. “My best friend, Thato, who is now my creative director, went with me everywhere and has been with me every step of the way. That made it easier for my family, who ultimately just wanted to know I wasn’t alone.”
By 2018, Tyla had signed with FAX Records, inking a deal with her current manager and label co-founder Brandon Hixton, who later brought on Colin Gayle, an artist manager from Jamaica. “At that point, we were all committed to [breaking Tyla in] Africa,” says Gayle. “African music wasn’t recognizable to the outside world, but we were just as excited as she was to spread the word. From the beginning, that was the selling point for all of us.”
Tyla signed with Epic Records in 2021 after a bidding war that saw Epic chief Sylvia Rhone posting billboards in Johannesburg featuring the singer’s image with the message “Epic Records, love Sylvia Rhone.” It was the only way to secure the singer’s attention despite travel restrictions tied to the pandemic.
It was a lot for a 19-year-old to absorb. “When I got signed, a lot of opinions came in,” she recalls, “and it was a very overwhelming experience.” She tried a number of different musical styles over the course of many songwriting sessions and content-creation workshops, some of which tried to steer her into a bubblegum-pop direction. Those songs “didn’t feel like me at all,” she says, remembering one session where the songs pitched to her “were the most generic compositions you could ever think of.”
Richie Shazam for Variety
Adding to the pressure were cultural mores whereby women are in submissive roles — “You stay out of men’s conversations, the men eat first,” she says — making it even more challenging for a young woman to take charge. “I remember being in my hotel room and my managers were calling me, ‘Come down, we need to cut the song,’” she recalls. “I was crying and thinking, ‘This is not what I want. I didn’t get signed to do this,’” she says of the push to record songs that didn’t reflect her vision. “They had to [coax] me out of that room. “But,” she continues with a deep sigh. “I think through doing that, I realized how much more I love African music. It made me more persistent in keeping my ideas.” So she cut out the noise and honed in on the sounds she felt in her heart.
“I think back to recording ‘Water,’ and I couldn’t have been more closed off to the outside world,” she recalls. “It was just me, my engineer and his pregnant wife in the studio. I used to be so shy.”
“Tyla’s first hit had to come from an African perspective — sonically rooted in Africa, but with the ability to travel globally,” says Ezekiel Lewis, president of Epic Records. “‘Water’ was really the fulfillment of that vision. It confirmed what we believed: that she needed to launch her career with something authentic yet universally resonant.”
When it came to crafting the thematic material of her new album, Tyla had more than a few life lessons to bring. “I had to grow up fast, especially for someone coming from a strict family,” she notes. “It was a constant challenge to learn.”
One of those challenges related to her ethnic identity. Her background — a combination of Zulu, Irish and Mauritian-Indian heritage — became an unexpected point of controversy as her fame surged, fueled in part by the resurfacing of a 2020 TikTok in which she refers to herself as a “Coloured South African.” In a June 2024 interview, Charlamagne Tha God asked her to explain the “debates that they be having about your identity,” and she declined to answer, furthering the drama.
But although the term “Colored” can be triggering for Black Americans, a painful reminder of the country’s ongoing racist history, in South Africa, the term is more nuanced, often used to reflect a mixed-race heritage. In a statement posted online, just hours after the Charlamagne interview, Tyla said, “I don’t expect to be identified as Coloured outside of [South Africa] by anyone not comfortable doing so because I understand the weight of that word outside [of South Africa]. But to close this conversation, I’m both Coloured in South Africa and a Black woman.”
“That [controversy] was really confusing for me,” she admits. “I understood both sides of the story, but I was left asking, ‘OK, but what do I do now?’ When who you are is challenged, especially when it’s all you’ve ever known, it shakes you. You want to stand your ground, because if you don’t, someone else will try to define it for you.”
Richie Shazam for Variety
That tension — the constant negotiation between personal identity and public perception — is one many artists know intimately. For those who move between cultures, like Tyla, identity isn’t just personal; it becomes part of their artistic appeal, adding depth and global resonance to their work.
Mexican-American singer Becky G, who appeared on Tyla’s debut album, sees it as one of her most compelling qualities: “The more authentic we are, the more universal the music becomes,” she says. “I really connected with [Tyla’s] story — growing up between cultures, navigating different languages and genres, and still finding a way to make it yours. The music that comes from that place just hits different.”
These experiences carried over into the new songs collected on her recent four-track EP, “WWP” (referencing the age-old South African chant, “We Want to Party”). In the biting “Mr. Media,” she sings: “Misdemeanor, why, why, why?/ Why you gotta tell them, lie, lie, lie? / Honestly I’m not surprised, Mr. Media … No matter how hard I try / I can never get it right.”
“I wanted to have music out there that felt like who I am right now,” she says. “I wanted something very aggressive and loud and summer-banger worthy. I needed to say what I said in ‘Mr. Media’ and let those ideas out before the album came. ‘We Wanna Party’ is meant to be a bridge to the album — and when the album comes,” she teases, “it’s going to be such a totally different vibe than what people are expecting.”
As for the EP’s love songs like “Bliss,” although no current love interest has been confirmed, it’s a fair assumption that a certain someone is a source of inspiration. Is she in love right now?
She lets out a whispered “Yeah,” before laughing. “Well, I’m in love with a lot of things,” she says, and adds, “You really have to make time for romance, and I purposefully set aside time for it when it’s worth it. I’ve had some heartbreak, so I’m stronger now, but I love hard. Like, if my heart is broken, it’s brrrrroken.”
* * *
In September, Tyla will release a new amapiano single titled “Chanel,” with her second album expected to follow in October. The songs were recorded in various locations around the world, primarily between Los Angeles and Barcelona, with a few other stops along the way. These diverse settings motivated her to experiment with a range of stylistic elements, including rap and reggaeton. The project is still in the works, and she’s deep in the process of narrowing down the final track list, cutting from a growing pool of standout contenders.
“I had more time to work on this album than I did the first, so I have a lot of songs,” she says. “It feels really current — this time, I’m living what I’m singing, and it feels way more personal,” she concludes with a smile. “Way more like me.”
As she gets ready to head to her next engagement, Tyla still isn’t quite ready to trade her robe for more conventional clothes. “You better look after me,” she jokes to her security guard as she gathers her things, “because this robe could unravel at any second!”
Asked what’s next, she offers up an expansive list of career goals: more performing, acting, voice acting (“It’d have to be a really funny character”) and creative direction for other artists.
“I want to do almost everything,” she says. “I want to look back one day when I’m older and be like, ‘Damn! I really lived my life.’”
