Tyla, a popular African singer and two-time Grammy winner, came out with her second studio album entitled “A*POP” on July 24.
The album contains several hit singles that were released before the full album, including “CHANEL,” “IS IT LOVE,” “IS IT” and her popular collaboration with Swedish singer Zara Larsson, “SHE DID IT AGAIN.” These singles have garnered great excitement from the public, collectively hitting over 574 million streams on Spotify, with “CHANEL” earning the most at over 393 million as of Aug. 6. Many of these songs are popular on social media, such as “CHANEL” amassing 24 million posts under the sound on TikTok.
Given this massive growth, the album had a lot of pressure to meet public expectations and demand. So far, the album seems to be doing positively, but it is still struggling to match the great success of its singles. Most of the streams and popularity from the album are largely from its leading releases; the new songs are having difficulty drawing in the same audience. However, Spotify confirmed on Instagram that “A*POP” was fourth for Top Album Debut Global and third for Top Album Debut USA as of July 24-26.
“A*POP” is an album that hopes to define what African pop music can be, which is why the album is named after the genre. All the musical collaborators, except for Zara Larsson, are other African artists, such as Liquideep, MaWhoo and Babalwa M. This gives other artists the chance to show their own African pop influences and contributions as well.
When discussing her inspiration for the album with Billboard Africa, Tyla talks about being influenced by her African upbringing and culture, as well as her exposure to the rest of the world through media such as MTV and Disney Channel.
“I think some people forget that Africa isn’t just dust,” Tyla told Billboard Africa when addressing her global media exposure and her personal identity to Africa.
It is Tyla’s global inspiration that really sets the stage for the Y2K fashion and trends that are heavily used in the media marketing and music video visuals for “A*POP.” Her music videos and visualizers for this album are very fun and stunning, including bright neon pinks and blues for a party aesthetic, as well as a contrasting calm aesthetic of blacks and whites. Her most recent music video from her song “THAT GIRL,” however, received criticism for reduced production quality and speculations that AI was used to create the animations and art. Speculation on decreased quality is most certainly warranted given the great success and support she received from her first album’s videos, such as the Grammy Award-winning music video “Water” and its beautiful aesthetics and engaging shots.
As far as the music itself goes, “A*POP” boils down to being inconsistent. The album has a very odd combination of popular, catchy hits and more mediocre, forgettable songs that bring down the energy the singles brought to the album in the first place. Songs like “DOUBLE BLIND” and “HOT TUBS” blur together by the end, failing to recapture the pleasant personality brought by “A*POP”’s earlier singles.
The album’s new songs are not bad by any means. “KISS” does a decent job revitalizing the fun and more memorable sound Tyla cultivated with her leading singles, bringing back interesting beats and energy. The rest of the new songs do a more or less better job at this, but most fail at simply being interesting and successful at standing on their own. Fully listening to the album can be confusing since the songs seem a bit mismatched.
The album, however, does do something meaningful. It creates music that brings global attention to South African music and artists. Tyla herself mentions the importance of embracing and defining her identity through this album on Apple Music. This album was a way for her to define herself as “an African musician first and foremost” among comments that question her cultural identity.
This inspiring and meaningful motivation, however, fails to shine through in the album, as many songs do not explore these personal ideas and concepts. The songs instead veer into basic, which seems contradictory to Tyla’s apparent inspiration. The lyrics are fairly rudimentary and do not say much about her identity or culture. The instrumental for each song is stronger, but sometimes they struggle against having an interesting R&B sound and a more generic, slightly tired 2000s sound. For a moment that was supposed to be Tyla introducing her cultural experience and self to the world, the album feels a bit underwhelming.
“A*POP” in the context of Tyla’s short time in the music industry is still a progression and growth from her first album, “TYLA.” This album only came out two years prior to “A*POP,” but it and her release of “Water” in 2023 skyrocketed her into fame. Hopefully, Tyla will be able to find herself and her voice more, since “A*POP” does not seem to accurately portray her passions as an artist. Her future albums and music may be an opportunity to showcase what she truly cares about and hopes to convey to her audience.
Kelly Saenz is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the summer 2026 quarter. She can be reached at saenzkm@uci.edu.
Edited by Travis Foley and Riley Schnittger.
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