Is Popiano the Next African Wave? Ask Tyla

This feature is a part of a partnership between Rolling Stone MENA and Beyon Al Dana Amphitheatre presenting Tyla’s live debut in Bahrain. Tickets are available for the two shows on December 9 & December 14.

When Tyla slid across a glossy marble floor in the now signature body roll of “Water,” most of the world didn’t immediately clock the South African DNA embedded in the song. They heard the hook – a razor-clean, earworm line delivered with effortless restraint – and they heard pop. But beneath it was something softer, deeper, unmistakably Southern African: a dotted Amapiano rhythm, a log-drum pulse pulled several degrees toward the mainstream. It was the beginning of a new mutation. Tyla called it popiano.

What sounded like a clever portmanteau at first is quickly proving to be a genre-defining thesis. Popiano is the slicker, more melodic, more global cousin of Amapiano – and in 2024 and 2025, it’s the strain rewriting the power dynamics of African music.

For the past decade, Afrobeats has dominated the African-to-global pipeline. Wizkid and Burna Boy cracked the international charts. Rema collided with the U.S. market. Tems became a blueprint. Meanwhile, Amapiano was running its own race underground and in clubs, spreading through DJs and diaspora, bass-heavy and hypnotic. Afrohouse, its older, more polished sibling, was simultaneously evolving across Lusophone and North African dance floors. But popiano? That’s something else entirely. It’s a genre willing to step directly into the centre of global pop without diluting its African essence.

And Tyla is its face.

Amapiano’s Slow Burn to Everywhere

Before “Water,” Amapiano had already splintered into countless micro-subgenres and regional shapes. From South African townships to Nairobi rooftops to Berlin warehouses, the sound circulated like a secret that everyone eventually knew. Its hybrid nature – equal parts jazz, house, kwaito, soul, log drums, and mood – made it wildly adaptable.

But what changed the game was recognition from outside the sub-continent. North Africa and the Arab region caught the wave earlier than most people realised.

Take Wegz, Egypt’s biggest rap export and Spotify’s most streamed Arab artist in 2022. When he released “Ezz Al Arab,” the official FIFA 2022 World Cup anthem, the production subtly leaned into Amapiano’s rhythmic DNA. It wasn’t traditional Amapiano, but it was close enough to signal a cultural shift: Arab audiences could not only dance to Amapiano – they could claim it, reshape it, and send it into stadium-level circulation.

This mattered. The Arab region has always been a crossroads for African genres, but Amapiano found traction there far quicker than previous waves. Amapiano isn’t just drifting into the MENA region – it’s planting flags. In Dubai, the scene is already loud and visible: collectives like House of Yanos pack out regular Amapiano nights, while South African heavyweights Major League DJz headline beachfront parties at Be Beach DXB, and clubs like SOT Dubai run weekly Afro-Amapiano Saturdays. The sound’s reach stretches further across the region’s Afro-diasporic and digital corridors: Algerian-born star Miraa May teamed with Jaydon Lewis and Lady Du on the explicitly Amapiano “Don’t You See Freestyle (Pt. 2),” and Moroccan producer Ramoon has been folding Amapiano’s log-drum pulse into his pan-African-meets-Maghreb production palette. It’s not that there are fully formed amapiano scenes in every city from Casablanca to Doha, but the genre’s fingerprints are everywhere.

The sound was creeping into the mainstream without losing its edge. That’s the context Tyla walked into – or more accurately, glided into – with her own angle on the sound.

Tyla and the Birth of Popiano

Tyla didn’t set out to invent a genre. She set out to expand the one she inherited.

“I grew up listening to everything,” she has said in multiple interviews – Afrobeats, R&B, gospel, Western pop, and the South African sounds shaped her style. But where her contemporaries leaned deeper into traditional amapiano or Afropop, Tyla aimed for clarity: crisp vocals, tight production, punchy hooks. The roots of pop.

When “Water” became a global phenomenon – charting from Johannesburg to Jeddah to Jakarta – the industry scrambled for language to describe what she’d done. She gave it to them: popiano. Amapiano, but engineered for stadiums, playlists, glittering rooftops across cosmopolitan capitals, and private parties attended by the young and beautiful. It garnered a cross-continental appeal.

And crucially, it didn’t betray its origins. If anything, Tyla’s fusion brought more people back to the source material. Suddenly, global audiences were exploring Musa Keys, Focalistic, DBN Gogo, Uncle Waffles, and the spacious, deep-cut Amapiano tracks that formed the genre’s backbone.

Tyla’s popiano became a gateway drug.

But the question remains: is popiano a moment or a movement?

Why Popiano Matters Now

Popiano sits at an intersection where African genres historically struggle or excel depending on the era: the boundary between local authenticity and global legibility. Amapiano, in its pure form, is long, slow-building, and often intentionally minimal – brilliant for clubs, but tricky for radio. Afrobeats has the opposite problem: increasingly polished and export-ready, but sometimes criticised for edging too close to generic pop.

Popiano, right now, feels like the middle path.

It doesn’t shy away from melody, but it doesn’t smooth over the syncopation. It can fit on a Top 40 playlist and still feel unmistakably African. It moves seamlessly between dance floors and TikTok feeds. It doesn’t ask global audiences to study; it simply invites them in.

And the Arab region – always a surprising but crucial amplifier of African musical movements – is leaning in hard. Festival lineups in the Gulf are adding amapiano and popiano acts. Moroccan and Egyptian producers are experimenting with hybridised rhythms. Saudi Arabia’s nightlife scene, with its rapidly expanding infrastructure, has become an unexpected outpost for South African DJs.

In Cairo, young producers like Zaid Khaled and Aziz Maraka are already toying with the popiano structure. In Tunis and Casablanca, the sound is being blended with local percussion. And in Sudanese and Yemeni diasporic circles, amapiano’s emotive groove has become a staple of community parties and underground sets.

The shift is cultural, not just musical.

A New Hierarchy in African Pop?

As popiano rises, the power dynamics in African music are reconfiguring. For years, Afrobeats dominated the export conversation. But Amapiano’s ascent — and now popiano’s acceleration — is redistributing attention across the continent.

Suddenly, South Africa is not just supplying talent but shaping the sonic blueprint. Afrohouse is being reconsidered. East African electronic scenes are collaborating more with Johannesburg producers. North Africa is pulling from the South rather than exclusively from the West.

For once, Africa’s musical centre of gravity feels multiple – Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Cairo – rather than singular.

Tyla is not doing this alone, but she is holding the most visible torch. She is the point at which the underground and the mainstream touch fingertips. She is the proof that an African sound can chart globally without losing its accent.

And if popiano becomes the next continental wave – not replacing Afrobeats but standing beside it – it will be because she made the argument irresistible.

Every generation in African music gets a defining shift: the rise of Afrobeats and Fela in the ’70s; the globalisation of Raï in the ’90s; the Afrobeats explosion of the 2010s; the Amapiano takeover of the 2020s.

Popiano may be next – not because it is louder or faster or more commercial, but because it reflects what African music is becoming: borderless, experimental, multilingual, and unbothered by old categories. It represents a new African youth. One at ease with its authentic self, glamorous, and essentially cosmopolitan.