The 24th of July 2026 will mark a momentous moment in the career of Grammy-winning South African pop superstar Tyla Seethal, with the day being the release date of her sophomore album, A*POP. Making an entry two years since her self-titled debut and one since the drop of her party-starting extended play WWP, the long-awaited follow-up to her historic maiden project arrives as the 24-year-old’s answers to questions of longevity and the ability to continue holding her own as an artist of mass appeal and cultural significance not only on the local front but on the global music village.
A*POP album cover | SUPPLIED
As with her first opus, Tyla doesn’t lean on one sound with her 14-track forthcoming album. While the core of A*POP is a sonic hybrid that borrows appreciably from pop, dancehall, and reggae, the Edenvale supernova sprinkles handsome touches of trap, R&B, rock, dance, as well as slight amapiano treatment for good measure as the rightful queen of popianpo. The production of Seethal’s second doesn’t look back to Tyla, and any evidence of copying the previous album’s memo manifests in A*POP’s rebellion against labels and monolithic categorisation.
Truly, there is not a single box that can limit this album, and the curation behind the feature selection backs this. The features, a source of polarising debates on social media upon being shared along with the final tracklist, along with their placements add depth and range to the album, the sort of unpredictability and creative turn that sets A*POP in a world of its own. Whether Tyla is tapping into a globalised sound with Zara Larsson on “She Did It Again” and relishing Caribbean and Brazilian influences or taking things back to the nest while remaining proud of her roots by roping in assistance from amapiano powerhouses Babalwa M and MaWhoo and legendary soul house duo Liquideep for the remake of “Fairytale,” A*POP is a creatively open spectacle that positions Tyla as a musician who straddles the line between Mzansi pride and world-impacting reach.
Check out “She Did It Again”:
A*POP explores the visceral feelings born from the complexity of physical romance (“Is It Love”, “Kiss”, “Feel Something”), the turmoil-ridden aftermath of love gone sour (“I Don’t Care”), opulence and Tyla flexing her big girl bag (“Chanel” and “That Girl”). But those themes are merely the dominant ones, and they subtract nothing from the focus of the album when Seethal, on a creative whim, decides to segue into other minor but not insignificant subjects in the project.
While the record is dynamised by the inclusion of fan favourites such as “Chanel” and “Is It”, “Mr Nonchalant” with its groovy Brazilian flair and the trap-influenced “Right Now”, which sees Tyla rap-sings her way through the song, are some of the other head-bopping offerings that are sure to make their places in the hearts of fanatics and nominal listeners alike. The “Water” hitmaker does, at times, exhibit the occasional quirk of being stuck in her old ways, but this isn’t a bad thing for the record. And by old ways, I mean Tyla’s penchant for the early 2000s aesthetic musically, especially when venturing towards territories of contemporary R&B and urban music during the eras of Aaliyah, a young Rihanna, and the Pussycat Dolls and also on the local side of things as far as Brenda Fassie and Lebo Mathosa are concerned.
Tyla | SUPPLIED
A*POP is an album that is guaranteed to tickle the fancies of every admirer of Tyla’s first project, and there’s enough novelty in it to keep the album from being a clone of the debut altogether. With this one, Tyla proves that her success with the self-titled debut was not a fluke, but an intentional stroke of musical genius she can conjure up in a moment’s notice.
