“Girl, I can’t get into it. It tastes like the earth,” Tyla says in her rhythmic South African dialect. We’re on the topic of matcha, the ancient green tea powder that’s been as symbolic of 2025 as Labubus, Dubai chocolate, ChatGPT therapy, and in fact, Tyla herself. The 23-year-old singer has become a household name due to her infectious fusion of pop and homegrown South African genres like amapiano, gqom, and Bacardi, while creating viral moves we’d probably all replicate if our waists would cooperate.
Following her 2024 self-titled debut album, which accompanied her Grammy award for best African musical performance for the single “Water,” the artist returned in July 2025 to break her own streaming record when she released “Is It,” which racked up almost 1.3 million listens in the first day. The four-track WWP (which stands for “We Wanna Party”) EP has surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify, topping the UK Afrobeats chart. This year she lit up the stage at Coachella in April and at London’s All Points East in August, and now she’s preparing to tour Asia. The world waits to see what’s next. “There’s no right way to do anything creative,” she says with an ambition that shows this is just the beginning. “It’s limitless.”
Her childhood in South Africa was training for this moment, when she’s gaining global notoriety. “Yo, ever since I could walk, I loved to dance, I loved to perform,” Tyla says over Zoom from New York. Her aunt was a dancer and taught her to belly dance, and at school she would channel all the influences around her—music videos, trending dances spreading through the country—and put on a show with friends for other students. “I don’t think I’m the best dancer. It doesn’t always look like the reference, but it will be a Tyla version of it.”
South Africa also gave her built-in resilience and drive. “I feel like I’ve experienced a thousand lives. Every day we were in the grass, in the streets. We would take clothes and sell them on the road and then go buy sweets. We would scam my neighbors into giving us money so we can have money for school. Me and my cousins would always get up to mischief,” she says. She describes her parents as “protective” but rejects the idea that she could be considered “sheltered.”
She adds: “I got to experience life for what it is. I feel like it prepared me also, because I can take criticism and appreciate everything that I’m given. There’s something deeper that fulfills me. You know, it’s not really the fame and the screaming fans. It’s also the people behind me.”
There’s a new generation of South Africans alongside Tyla riding the wave of amapiano—an electronic genre born in the townships that has exploded 5,668% on Spotify since 2018 and is streamed heavily in the US and the UK. She cites a love for Uncle Waffles, the cool-girl DJ who “really pushes the culture” and is one to check out if you want to find the roots that helped inspire Tyla’s sound. For her, the sound is popular because it’s all about a sense of freedom. “I think, growing up in South Africa, music is spiritual to us because there was a time where we weren’t free to express ourselves the way we are now.”
This EP is just a warm-up for her hotly anticipated second studio record. Tyla—one of two 2025 Glamour Global Women of the Year—is still defining where she’s going to go for this sophomore album. “[Making WWP,] I didn’t feel like I wanted to commit to anything as yet. I wanted to still play around,” she says. If the element that represents her first album is water, then the EP is definitely fire. “We wanna party” is a carefree statement often chanted by crowds in clubs in her home country, but a deeper look at the lyrics in the dance-floor-ready tracks reveals a tension often felt by the singer—she’s trying to create a carefree world while under intense and sometimes ruthless public scrutiny.
As happens for almost all young females in the spotlight, her public appearances have been judged. Sometimes the judgment feels flimsy (e.g., she wasn’t dancing closely enough with Usher at one of his concerts), but other times it’s more fraught, often spurred by the fact that Tyla refers to herself as “colored” and has done so in a 2020 TikTok and in interviews. This led her to be pressed on the radio show The Breakfast Club by cohost Charlamagne tha God. Then, when WWP was released, some commentators like Black news media outlet The Root and rapper turned broadcaster Joe Budden focused on making comparisons between the physical sales of her debut album versus the EP to prove the point that her comments have turned Black listeners off. She’s not letting it get in her head, though.
“I just wanted to have a good time. I wanted to go out, I wanted to party, I wanted to say anything and everything. I realized that people just like to talk—that’s just my life now,” she says. Tyla briefly changed her Twitter bio to “Entitled uppity African,” echoing an insult leveled at her by media commentator Armon Wiggins. “Instead of social media clapbacks—[which] I’ve been doing—I just wanted to sing about it and turn it into something fun and pop.”
As a result, a more defiant Tyla is emerging when compared with her earlier tracks. Her vocals soar above crisp hi-hats and soft snares and a steady beat as she sings, “Is it the fucks that I don’t give?” on the catchy lead single “Is It,” while the repeated chants on “Mr. Media” take down how she’s reacted to the intense public scrutiny during the past year: “I can never get it ri-i-ight.”
The truth is, the way Tyla looks and labels herself means completely different things where she was born than in the United States. In America the term colored is an offensive and antiquated Jim Crow–era label to segregate Black people, among other things. The “one-drop rule” in law meant that having any Black relatives would prevent you from integrating into white spaces. However, being colored in South Africa is its own distinct racial classification for people who might have European, Black, and Asian roots.
Until apartheid ended in the 1990s, being colored there meant you received intentionally poor education in comparison with white children, for example—but it would still be superior to Black education. Born after life in South Africa was desegregated, Tyla risks either alienating and insulting Black people at home by claiming to be them to appease African Americans, or confusing her new audience who feel rejected that she won’t identify with their label even if she looks like she belongs.
I ask if it’s been hard seeing how her identity has been misinterpreted as she’s relocated for work. “I’ve always related to Black Americans. I saw myself in artists like Aaliyah and always looked up to them,” she says slowly, addressing a subject she clearly wants to prepare a careful response to. “I think at first, I was very taken aback, because I was kind of confused. I’ve only known one thing for 23 years of my life; then I got to travel and learn about other cultures, other people. I learned what their normal was. I think it’s beautiful to meet people that are curious to know about how things are back home and to find the things we do have in common.”
Luckily Tyla hasn’t had to do this learning and unlearning alone, as she has been able to take her family on the road. Her parents watched her win a Grammy last year for best African music performance (“they don’t know how to feel—it feels like an alternate universe, almost”); her younger sister Sydney, a 21-year-old influencer, enjoys accompanying her to industry events; and Thato Nzimande, her best friend since high school, has creative-directed the “Push to Start” video and other Tyla public appearances like the Grammys.
“It’s been fun watching conversations that we’ve had in bedrooms come to life,” she says. Bringing major labels and other artists into the creative process is a very new way of working; just recently she’s worked with Damiano David, Cardi B, Teyana Taylor and Jill Scott, Lisa, and even the Smurfs. “I feel like with collaboration, it’s something that over time I got comfortable with, because I started with literally just myself and my best friend.”
The pair met on the first day of high school. “This one girl did something really funny, and I just looked back and I saw her, and it was only us laughing at it. I was like, This girl gets it. We just got each other. And she’s also so creative. She’s a creative director, she’s a stylist, she’s a designer, she’s everything.” In 2019, Tyla began recording her first single, accompanied on her journey into the industry by Nzimande. “I just remember being on this beanbag that my manager had at his house, wondering, What if this works one day? It’s so nice to be on this ride and see it unfold with someone that you’ve grown up with.”
Among the many things they’ve done together is world-build for Tyla, creating an unmistakable aesthetic: music videos set in low-lit parties, on the sun-kissed streets of South Africa, or in joyous scenes surrounded by dancers in bright clothing. Tyla has become an overnight fashion sensation for her Y2K-adjacent minidresses or two-pieces made of jewels or fur, with young women often citing her as a source of style inspiration.
Her approach to beauty is also becoming a signature, thanks to curly wigs, Rapunzel cornrows, and micro-braids. “I feel the most Tyla when I’m in a protective style, or my natural hair. When I really want to play and feel like a character, that’s when I pull out the lace front.” She also doesn’t feel complete without one key element. “If I don’t have a slit in my eyebrow, there’s something wrong. I will find a razor. I once got the blade out of a shaving razor that you use for your legs to slit my eyebrow. Don’t do this at home; I’m careful. I’m a professional.”
When she’s at home, she enjoys being a “ratchet version” of her pop star aesthetic, focusing less on designers and more on DIY creations. “I will take a top and I will stretch the neck and make it into a skirt, and then I will take my top and I’ll cut it up. I will just make it happen.” Does this mean that one day we will see a Tyla fashion line? “Girl, if it could come out today. I want to do everything,” she says.
Even though she’s creating a public persona, Tyla still feels that internally very little has changed. “When I’m at home, I’m who I’ve known for 23 years of my life, and when I’m out in the world, I have to do all these things that are not normal. It still feels like me but like I’m playing a game. Like I’m in a virtual world.”
The unusual thing now is that the eyes of the world are watching her live out her young years. In August after a picture circulated of her allegedly being carried out of a party in Brazil—a scene many may have experienced in their early 20s—she tweeted an iconic photo of a young Beyoncé slumped in the back of a car. The club brings her so much inspiration for her music, but her fame adds a new complex dynamic.
“When I’m on stage, I really do not care. I want people to look at me. I want everyone to be entertained. But when I’m off the stage, I’m kind of shy,” she says. “I don’t want people watching me party. I want to be in my own world. I remember in the beginning it was very weird for me, because it felt like an overnight switch. It was very drastic.”
The singer admits she likes to keep her circle tight, especially when it comes to getting advice on how to navigate fame. “Being very honest, I don’t really speak to people besides my family and very tight people. I’m kind of just figuring it out by myself. I’m very private,” she says. She unwinds from working by taking trips to get back in touch with nature, finding quality time with herself to bike over the Brooklyn Bridge, journal, and “doodle” (although a quick web search will show that word is modest, as her paintings could be hung in the Louvre). “I want to be in a chill outfit, barefoot, no makeup, to just feel like myself.”
Then when she’s recharged, she’s back in the studio or on stage making songs that make women feel good about themselves. Her up-tempo beats, high-pitched ad libs, and sunny melodies are designed to create the confidence we all need to shake off the pressures of life while we find ourselves. “I want everyone to be dancing. I want nobody to be worried about what they look like,” Tyla says. “What’s the point of life if everything is based on what other people think about you?”
Photographer: Delali Ayivi @delaliayivi
Wardrobe stylist: Dione Davis @dionemdavis
Hair: Yusef Williams @yusefhairnyc
Makeup: Jimmy Stam @jimmy_stam
Nails: Tiana Hardy @tiny.luxury
Set design: WayOut Studio @wayoutstudioco
Production: Petty Cash Productions @petty_cash_production
Read Glamour’s other Global Women of the Year cover story on Demi Moore here, and be sure to check back on October 27 for the rest of our 2025 honorees.