The advent of South African global star Tyla’s A*POP started out as a highly-anticipated and momentous release to follow up her self-titled debut; however, the ensuing conversation surrounding the drop of the project has since elevated the status and relevance of the record. Before the 24th of July 2026, it was a question of whether the Edenvale-born megastar would be able to top, if not match, the heights of what many deemed a tough act to follow. The discussions that have taken over since the album’s release have been stoked by its contrarian take on what African music is and what it sounds like.
The aftermath has been a tug-o’-war between opposing thought camps, with one side scratching their heads about what’s inherently African about Tyla’s new album while the other stands equally stumped about the narrow-minded verdict that A*POP doesn’t sound African because it’s like nothing they’ve ever heard before from a native of the continent.
Check out “Fairytale”:
The two-time Grammy winner’s second studio album showcased itself as an eclectic spectacle. With an roster of trusted producers and composers such as Sammy Soso, P2J, and Troy Taylor, names that shaped the sound of much of the album, A*POP came in smoking with a diverse range of sounds and influences, borrowing from pop, amapiano, rock, dancehall, R&B, and trap music, amongst other musical elements. The album is a hybrid in every sense of the word, and its ability to play Twister musically by keeping its hands and feet on the circles of multiple genres has been a bone of contention since its release.
The controversy now begs the question: What did people think African music is in the first place, a monolithic phenomenon that must exist in a single pigeonhole?
Tyla | SUPPLIED
The continent itself is vast, with the East, West, South and Central regions operating within their respective musical identities. However, African musicians are not necessarily limited to their regions creatively. If this were not the case, there would be no Davido making “Unavailable” or a Tyla making a body of work that oscillates between South African sounds and cosmopolitan influences. There is a danger of stereotyping creativity from the continent when African music is defined through a certain and narrow lens, boxing artists to a point of not allowing them the freedom to explore their base sound while experimenting with it.
All Afrobeats is African music, but African music is not all Afrobeats. The same goes for Amapiano, Bongo Flava, and Highlife. Not understanding this is the same reason the BET Awards are still giving out a Best Afrobeats award to African artists who don’t even do Afrobeats predominantly, and the same reason there are still African categories for the Grammys. It is the same thinking that made people who heard “Fairytale” on A*POP feel like it wasn’t part of the album and that it shouldn’t have went under the name. It is limiting. It shows a lack of understanding of the diversity of Africans as creatives, and this paucity of consideration indicates a laziness when it comes to letting Africans who exist in their respective environments define themselves and their music the way they want to without assigning them pre-existing labels and recycling tags already used for other artists.
Tyla with her Grammy win | SUPPLIED
There has to be a concerted effort to meet artist halfway and to do so on their own terms. Defining what African music is based on preset characteristics and familiar attributes places the continent in danger such that African music runs the risk of becoming a caricature to the global music village. Worse, if the whole continent starts being defined by one sound, the other sounds might become minimised or unfairly assimilated, thus compromising the identities of creatives living in different parts of the continent. Imagine how absurd it would be to classify an Afrobeats song as an Amapiano record simply because they are both African sounds and because you haven’t taken the time to respect the creatives of both sounds enough to understand the nuance between the two. Never mind the ridiculousness of thinking one sound is of much greater relevance simply because there are more popular acts representing the sound, as if other African sounds are not valuable as they already are within their natural spaces.
Africa has over 50 sovereign states, countless peoples split into tribes and sundry. To think that African music should be one thing flies in the face of all sense, and it is, in fact, an insult to continental creativity that should be addressed and a mistake to be studied and understood enough not to repeat again.
