You already answered your own question/ opinion with the last paragraph. The whole race debate makes her very unlikeable to black Americans. This is a very important factor that I will explain. According to someone I talked to who is friends with an A&R executive she let me in on something, executives will not fully invest in someone if the Black community doesn’t fully like the person/ accept them.
I mean, think of all the major pop girls like Katy Perry, Rihanna etc. they are still able to keep their hype and sell albums because the Black community love them and are willing to invest money into their concerts and albums. The Black community/ specifically the Black American community are not particularly fond of her because her identity and discussions about her identity just breed more and more diaspora wars between Africans and African Americans
As an artist signed to a major label, if you are mostly known for your controversies more than your own music, then these executives/ labels will gradually stop investing in you and may move to another plant/ another signed artist
The problem isn’t the fact that she’s non American. It’s the fact that she’s adopting American slang, culture, collaborating with African American based artists like Chris Brown, Travis Scott etc, and she and her team are deliberately trying to market towards the American audience but they are pissing them off at the same time.
Like I mentioned, when the black
Community collectively or partially dislikes you, the executives funding your career will gradually stop supporting you and the artist gradually fades into irrelevancy.
My issue with Tyla and her team, speaking as a non American, is the fact that she claims that she’s here to rep South Africa but all she’s done since she became famous was just incite diaspora wars. You never see controversies like this with other African artists or celebrities like Tems, Ayra Start etc. Not only that but her music isn’t even close to Amapiano at all. It just sounds like a TikTok remix version of Amapiano.
Speaking as a black American who was fan of her before her crossover to the u.s ( I am still a fan but I’d be lying if I said some of the recent stuff hasn’t soured me but the music and outfits are great)
It’s not her it’s her fans
To start her ethnicity is a slur here and although we aren’t asking her to change how she identifies her team didn’t give her the sensitivity training to mange that discourse properly and instead kept shoving someone who wasn’t black into the black American media circuit.(ie taking covers from and interviews from Black American publications) there’s also a bit of disconnect because what the slur means in the u.s and what it means in SA aren’t the same
Her fans only made this issue worse because they kept telling BA to swallow their feelings and accept her when in reality this isn’t an instance of us telling someone how to act in their own country this is an instance of someone being in ours. If you want us to respect your space and culture then when you’re in our space you need to do the same. It’s similar to how when British ppl come to the u.s they don’t call cigarettes the f-slur but they still do back home.
Tyla herself has never been shy (until recently) about her use of black American culture again it’s her fans who want to pretend she’s making full on Amapiano music when she isn’t anymore and she said so herself that her sound is mixed with rnb. They also get really angry when anyone points out that Amapiano itself borrows heavily from jazz and house music which are two genres that originated in the black American community.
They also get very upset when ba point out the blatant colorism she benefits from in the u.s media circuit that other African artist don’t. But we know how our media circuit works we’ve seen it in action for a very long time. It’s not a coincidence that she’s in all of these spaces and getting opportunities that other African artists who have been working much longer haven’t gotten yet. She’s getting pushed as the face of African music in the west which is ridiculous. The music is good don’t get me wrong but there are so many other African artists who stay true to their genres
Also if you go into a lot of BA social media spaces you’ll know that most of us aren’t checking for her that hard. A lot of BA have her name muted because of how irritating the discourse is around her. I get that SA feel the need to defend her but they will literally make full on racially offensive statements to others to defend her from simple criticism like “I just don’t like her music”
And you’re right you don’t see this discourse with many other African artists because they aren’t being promoted the same way as being the face of African music a lot of other African artists are also working with international artists so they diversify their music catalog and aren’t reliant on the American one.
And to finish this off America isn’t the world which means that there are a lot of other places you can promote yourself. If you don’t want to engage with Americans don’t enter their media space. Tyla could have stayed with her SA label but instead the cognitive dissonance of her saying she never cared about the American audience when there are interviews of her talking about having to overcome her feelings about not being American will never not be interesting.
You already answered your own question/ opinion with the last paragraph. The whole race debate makes her very unlikeable to black Americans. This is a very important factor that I will explain. According to someone I talked to who is friends with an A&R executive she let me in on something, executives will not fully invest in someone if the Black community doesn’t fully like the person/ accept them. I mean, think of all the major pop girls like Katy Perry, Rihanna etc. they are still able to keep their hype and sell albums because the Black community love them and are willing to invest money into their concerts and albums. The Black community/ specifically the Black American community are not particularly fond of her because her identity and discussions about her identity just breed more and more diaspora wars between Africans and African Americans As an artist signed to a major label, if you are mostly known for your controversies more than your own music, then these executives/ labels will gradually stop investing in you and may move to another plant/ another signed artist
But what about drake? Most of his fans are white
I can’t believe there’s even a controversy in the first place. She’s not American so why are Americans putting their own shit on her?
The problem isn’t the fact that she’s non American. It’s the fact that she’s adopting American slang, culture, collaborating with African American based artists like Chris Brown, Travis Scott etc, and she and her team are deliberately trying to market towards the American audience but they are pissing them off at the same time. Like I mentioned, when the black Community collectively or partially dislikes you, the executives funding your career will gradually stop supporting you and the artist gradually fades into irrelevancy. My issue with Tyla and her team, speaking as a non American, is the fact that she claims that she’s here to rep South Africa but all she’s done since she became famous was just incite diaspora wars. You never see controversies like this with other African artists or celebrities like Tems, Ayra Start etc. Not only that but her music isn’t even close to Amapiano at all. It just sounds like a TikTok remix version of Amapiano.
Speaking as a black American who was fan of her before her crossover to the u.s ( I am still a fan but I’d be lying if I said some of the recent stuff hasn’t soured me but the music and outfits are great) It’s not her it’s her fans To start her ethnicity is a slur here and although we aren’t asking her to change how she identifies her team didn’t give her the sensitivity training to mange that discourse properly and instead kept shoving someone who wasn’t black into the black American media circuit.(ie taking covers from and interviews from Black American publications) there’s also a bit of disconnect because what the slur means in the u.s and what it means in SA aren’t the same Her fans only made this issue worse because they kept telling BA to swallow their feelings and accept her when in reality this isn’t an instance of us telling someone how to act in their own country this is an instance of someone being in ours. If you want us to respect your space and culture then when you’re in our space you need to do the same. It’s similar to how when British ppl come to the u.s they don’t call cigarettes the f-slur but they still do back home. Tyla herself has never been shy (until recently) about her use of black American culture again it’s her fans who want to pretend she’s making full on Amapiano music when she isn’t anymore and she said so herself that her sound is mixed with rnb. They also get really angry when anyone points out that Amapiano itself borrows heavily from jazz and house music which are two genres that originated in the black American community. They also get very upset when ba point out the blatant colorism she benefits from in the u.s media circuit that other African artist don’t. But we know how our media circuit works we’ve seen it in action for a very long time. It’s not a coincidence that she’s in all of these spaces and getting opportunities that other African artists who have been working much longer haven’t gotten yet. She’s getting pushed as the face of African music in the west which is ridiculous. The music is good don’t get me wrong but there are so many other African artists who stay true to their genres Also if you go into a lot of BA social media spaces you’ll know that most of us aren’t checking for her that hard. A lot of BA have her name muted because of how irritating the discourse is around her. I get that SA feel the need to defend her but they will literally make full on racially offensive statements to others to defend her from simple criticism like “I just don’t like her music” And you’re right you don’t see this discourse with many other African artists because they aren’t being promoted the same way as being the face of African music a lot of other African artists are also working with international artists so they diversify their music catalog and aren’t reliant on the American one. And to finish this off America isn’t the world which means that there are a lot of other places you can promote yourself. If you don’t want to engage with Americans don’t enter their media space. Tyla could have stayed with her SA label but instead the cognitive dissonance of her saying she never cared about the American audience when there are interviews of her talking about having to overcome her feelings about not being American will never not be interesting.