Tyla’s sophomore album is out, and she’s using the moment to spotlight the South African voices who helped shape it. A*POP dropped on Friday, July 24, and among its 14 tracks are two Amapiano collaborations the singer has been eager to talk about since the album’s release, both with artists she has admired for years.
The first is “I Don’t Care,” her track with Amapiano singer Babalwa M. Sharing a clip of the music video on Instagram, Tyla didn’t hold back on how much the collaboration meant to her. “I fell in love with your voice from the first time I heard it and always wanted a record with you.
You carry such a gift and I’m honoured to have you on this,” she wrote. Babalwa M responded with equal warmth, thanking Tyla for the opportunity and calling herself honoured to share the moment, closing her reply with “sisonke,” a Zulu word meaning “we are together.”
The second collaboration, “Crazy of Me,” pairs Tyla with MaWhoo, born Thandeka Nontobeko Ngema, an artist known across Amapiano, gqom, and the emerging 3-Step sound for her distinctive vocal texture.
MaWhoo posted her own celebration of the release, encouraging fans to stream the track, and Tyla replied simply in the comments with “love you,” keeping the exchange as unguarded as the one with Babalwa M.
Both features arrived as something of a surprise. Tyla had revealed A*POP’s full 14-track lineup a day before confirming who would actually appear on it, and when Babalwa M and MaWhoo’s names surfaced alongside previously confirmed collaborator Zara Larsson, the reaction from South African fans was immediate.
Neither name was entirely unexpected given their standing in the industry, but seeing two homegrown Amapiano voices sit inside an album engineered for global reach carried its own weight.
That tension, between global ambition and local roots, is really the whole thesis of A*POP. Tyla has described the album’s title as standing for African pop, explaining in an interview that she has always resisted being boxed into a single genre.
“I feel that the music I make is hard to put in one genre because I incorporate so many different elements,” she said. “Growing up, I was not only influenced by Africa but also by the world, and I’ve always been interested in bringing all of that into my artistry. I feel like A-pop is a new way to see African music.”
The featured artist list reflects that balancing act directly. Zara Larsson appears on “She Did It Again,” a glossy, Y2K-leaning pop cut that leans into Tyla’s more international sensibilities, while Babalwa M and MaWhoo anchor the album’s Amapiano identity, keeping it tethered to the sound and scene Tyla emerged from before she became a global name.
Early listener reactions have been mixed but engaged, with some fans praising individual tracks including “I Don’t Care” and “Crazy of Me” as album highlights, while others have said the record doesn’t stray far enough from her debut sound.
Whatever the final verdict on A*POP as a whole, the moment matters for South African music beyond Tyla’s own numbers. Every time an artist of her scale features homegrown collaborators rather than exclusively international names, it puts Amapiano and the broader South African sound in front of an audience that might never have gone looking for it otherwise.
For Babalwa M and MaWhoo, that exposure, delivered through two of the most talked-about tracks on one of the year’s most anticipated pop albums, is not a small thing.
