Before she was a Grammy-winning global powerhouse and the self-appointed “Queen of Popiano,” Tyla was just a high school student sitting in an Engineering Graphics Design (EGD) class, completely oblivious to the musical revolution that was about to alter her trajectory.
In a recent viral interview with Brut on TikTok, the 24-year-old superstar took a nostalgic trip down memory lane to pinpoint the exact moment she fell in love with Amapiano—long before she exported it to the world’s biggest stages.
Classroom Vibrations: The Track That Stopped Everything
According to Tyla, the obsession didn’t begin at a massive festival or a late-night club set, but rather through a random moment of high school camaraderie.
“The first time that I heard it, I was in class, I was in school,” Tyla shared. “I was doing EGD and one of my friends, Lethabo, he played Gong Gong for the first time. He played it randomly in the class and I just literally stopped working because I was like, ‘What is this song?’. Since that day, the long drum just does something to me.”
The track in question is the iconic late-2018 anthem “Iskhathi (Gonggong)” by pioneering producer Kwiish SA featuring Vukani. Widely regarded by purists as a foundational stone of the genre’s commercial breakthrough, the track’s signature heavy “log drum” line structural blueprint captured her imagination instantly.
From High School Classrooms to Pioneering “Popiano”
Tyla’s musical origin story highlights that her deep-seated relationship with South Africa’s dominant dance export runs far deeper than just a trendy aesthetic or commercial algorithm.
- The Vision: Early on, Tyla realized that while traditional Amapiano tracks heavily leaned on expansive, seven-minute instrumental-led arrangements, there was a gap to overlay Western R&B and Pop vocal structures.
- The Evolution: That early high school infatuation directly birthed “Popiano”—the seamless genre-fusion heard on massive global charts via hits like “Water”, “Push 2 Start”, and “Chanel”.
From pausing her schoolwork to hear Kwiish SA’s bassline to becoming a cultural ambassador carrying South African street culture straight to the global mainstream, Tyla’s career continues to prove that the log drum’s magnetic pull is truly universal.
