New Voices: The Acts to Watch in 2024 (2024)

Last summer, 22-year-old South African singer Tyla summoned her choreographer, Lee-ché “Litchi” Janecke, to discuss “Water,” the lead single for her self-​titled debut album, out March 22. (Her accompanying tour, initially slated to start at the same time, has been postponed due to an injury.) She had seen how concert audiences responded when she did the Bacardi—a South African dance known for its hypnotic movements—and she wanted to incorporate it into the video. Litchi went to work, experimenting with a routine during a rolling blackout in Johannesburg. “Isent her a rough draft, and she lost her mind,” says Litchi.

The song already had all the makings of a pop banger—seductive vocals, an infectious beat—but it was the dance that inspired millions to take up a TikTok challenge and landed “Water” on Top 10 charts across 16 different countries last fall. Tyla soon became the first South African musician in more than half a century to enter the US Billboard Hot 100. It also won her a Grammy for best African music performance in February. “A Grammy was always a goal,” she says. “But never in a million years could I have fathomed it would happen this soon.”

Born and raised in Johannesburg, Tyla saw herself as a performer from an early age. A classic middle child, she made her parents and siblings her first audience: “I was the attention-​seeker.” After high school, she persuaded her parents to let her take a gap year to pursue music. “It was a lot of crying, a lot of convincing, but they knew that it wasn’t a random decision,” she says.

Her debut album is more than an introduction; it’s a mission statement about the kind of pop star she wants to be. It pushes the boundaries of what she calls “popiano” (a remix of the synth-driven South African subgenre amapiano) and shows a bolder, bombastic side of the singer. “People don’t know I can be spicy, but I can be spicy!” she says. As Litchi, who’s been working with the singer for nearly four years, puts it: “She’s showing everyone where her music came from. She’s a South African girl speaking to the world through dance, through music.” ​—Cat Cardenas

I like to go where things are uncomfortable, or complex,” says Omar Apollo. “Making music isn’t easy. That’s why I’ve dedicated a lot of my life to it.” It’s also why the 26-​year-old musician hasn’t taken much of a break since releasing his debut album, Ivory, in 2022. A lush blend of R&B and hip-hop along with Latin trap and Mexican corridos, Ivory revealed Apollo’s chameleonic versatility and earned the singer-songwriter his first Grammy nomination for best new artist. Not long after, he left his home base of LA to open for SZA on the North American leg of her arena SOS tour. “It’s not my show, so I was kind of scared of how the crowds would react,” he says. But “seeing people’s expressions, it’s huge.” In October, Apollo released Live for Me, a sparse and raw EP that was, in a way, an exercise in further discomfort. (One of the EP’s tracks, “Ice Slippin,” is about the winter he came out to his family.) “Those songs helped me find where I was going,” he says. And this year, there is new music on the way.

The son of working-class Mexican immigrants from Guadalajara, the singer (born Omar Apolonio Velasco in 1997) grew up in Hobart, Indiana, where he first taught himself to play the guitar. “Music gave me a feeling, a sparkle,” he says. After gaining traction on SoundCloud, Apollo was signed to Artists Without A Label in 2017 (he later switched to Warner), and quickly ensnared in a cycle of releases and tours. “I wasn’t really thinking about it,” he says, looking back. “My brain was just on autopilot.” He recorded one whole version of Ivory, then scrapped it and started over. “I had to discover myself,” he says.

That sense of clarity is crucial for Apollo, who values his instincts. Last summer, that meant leaving LA for London, where he set up shop in Little Venice, a quaint neighborhood named for its canals. “It was a little too quiet,” he jokes. The neighbors slipped him notes outlining their objections to the volume of Apollo’s speakers. In between recording, he’d invite friends on bike rides through its many parks.

Aside from the occasional noise complaint, the cloudy skies of London—a contrast to sunny LA—suited him. Apollo says he has always been drawn to subjects that are hard to grasp, rather than those that feel concrete or bright. (He is clearly aware of wider world issues: When we speak in early January, he’s just wrapped up a benefit concert for humanitarian aid in Sudan and Gaza.) “I’ve talked to my therapist about it, but I really like being in a different place.” In this case, dislocation added perhaps an even greater force to his new work. “I get kind of lost in the process of making music,” he acknowledges. “I’m surfacing emotions, and I’m not zoomed out. But later, I am like, Wow, I really wrote this from my soul. I felt this really deeply.” —CC