Tyla‘s whirlwind year following the release of her hit “Water” has shaped her into the artist she is today.
“I feel like I was kind of forced to grow up a bit faster and step more into myself. I feel like growing as a person influences the music a lot,” she tells V Magazine.
“Just traveling around, figuring things out, going through lots of ups and downs, life on the road, and even being from South Africa, where this life is very different than what I’m used to and what I grew up around naturally changed me as a person. You can feel it and hear it in the music.”
“For a long time, I wasn’t showing much of myself,” she tells the mag for its fall cover issue. “In the beginning, I was a little bit more shy, but through everything, I’ve gotten way more comfortable with people knowing everything they want to know about me.”
Tyla started her new musical chapter with WWP, released in July. She says she “never had a clear direction when I started” and went into it with “the intention of it being way more personal and true to how I think, how I feel, the type of music I want to make, and the way I want to sound.”
But with her upcoming single, “Chanel,” her hope is to make music that simply has replay value.
“I like to create music that makes me feel. [With] rap songs, the way people speak about luxury, being spoiled—that music is fun to me to listen to and dance to with my girls. So I want that feeling for my Tygers,” Tyla says in the interview. “I feel like there are a lot of people that can connect to it, because I’m 23, I’m going through life, and I’m experiencing things that a lot of people can relate to.”
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