Tyla won the first-ever Grammy for best African music performance earlier this year, but her debut album will compete in the pop category at the 2025 show.
Tyla’s self-titled effort was submitted to best R&B album but was kicked to best pop vocal album by the Recording Academy’s R&B screening committee, which is not made up of Academy staffers but of artists, producers, songwriters and more who are deemed experts of the R&B genre. If nominated in pop — an extremely stacked category — Tyla would compete alongside albums like Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet, Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine and Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
Booting Tyla’s album is a surprise since the 14-track project is rooted in the Southern African genre Amapiano, Afrobeats and R&B. Instead of being pushed to pop, her album should be competing in the best progressive R&B album category — a second R&B album award that was created to highlight R&B-based albums that also infuse other sounds and elements, from rap to dance to pop. SZA’s SOS won the honor earlier this year.
Six of the tracks from Tyla have appeared on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart, including the viral hit “Water,” which reached the No. 1 spot. “Water” peaked at No. 7 on the all-genre Hot 100 chart and spent 51 weeks on top of the U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart.
“Water” won the inaugural best African music performance Grammy in February. Tyla could have also been submitted to best world music album — where most Afrobeats artists have submitted their albums including Burna Boy, Tems and Ayra Starr — but best progressive R&B album feels like the best home for the project, sonically speaking. Tyla features collaborations with Travis Scott, Tems, Gunna, Becky G and Skillibeng.
The kick to pop feels like a shock when an album like Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You, which was pop but included sounds like R&B, dance and rap, was nominated and won best progressive R&B album (formerly called best urban contemporary album) in 2020. The Grammys also didn’t remove Tommy Richman’s viral TikTok hit “Million Dollar Baby” from rap though his team submitted the non-rap song to the rap categories this year. The news was met with criticism on social media, especially because Richman sings on the track and the 24-year-old claimed he isn’t a hip-hop artist though he later clarified his words.
First-round voting for the 2025 Grammys ended last week. Nominations will be announced Nov. 8 and final voting is from Dec. 12 through Jan. 3. The live show will air on Feb. 2 from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
)
English (US) ·