Tyla addresses her racial identity after 'awkward' radio interview

The South African singer tweeted that she "never denied my Blackness" after confusion from "The Breakfast Club" host Charlamagne Tha God.

To paraphrase a line from Tyla's summer-ready bop "Jump": They never met a Coloured girl from Joburg ... and it shows.

The South African singer was a guest on iHeartRadio radio show The Breakfast Club when host Charlamagne Tha God asked Tyla to explain what she means when she says she identifies as a "Coloured" person. Tyla's rep, off-camera, fielded the question, asking if they could skip it — Charlamagne obliged, but noted the "awkward" moment would stay in the final interview.

Tyla has described herself as Coloured in the past, which has given birth to the narrative that she somehow is denying her Blackness. So the 22-year-old took to X to set the record straight,

“Never denied my Blackness, idk where that came from,” she wrote. “I’m mixed with Black/Zulu, Irish, Mauritian/Indian, and Coloured. In Southa I would be classified as a Coloured woman and other places I would be classified as a Black woman. Race is classified differently in different parts of the world."

Historically, in America, colored (without the "u"), is an outdated and pejorative term for Black people. But Tyla is not American, which is where the confusion starts. "Coloured" also appears to be an outdated term, remnants from South Africa's apartheid regime from 1950 to 1991, and was used as a social category to differentiate between Black and white.

Tyla initially sparked "controversy" when a video she posted before her rise to fame gained traction last December. In the video, Tyla gives herself Bantu knots, a traditionally Zulu hairstyle, while declaring herself to be "Coloured" and explaining that it meant she "comes from a lot of different cultures."

However, some American viewers took offense to the term. The Grammy-winner addressed the debate in an April cover story with Cosmopolitan, saying, "When people are like, 'You’re denying your Blackness,' it’s not that at all. I never said I am not Black. It’s just that I grew up as a South African knowing myself as Coloured. And now that I’m exposed to more things, it has made me other things too. I’m also mixed-race. I’m also Black. I know people like finding a definition for things, but it’s 'and,' not 'or.'"

It seems like Charlamagne didn't read that interview, but either way, as she indicated in her interview with him, Tyla is done with the conversation.

“I don’t expect to be identified as Coloured outside of Southa by anyone not comfortable doing so because I understand the weight of that word outside of SA, but to close this conversation, I’m both Coloured in South Africa and a Black woman," she concluded, signing off with the Zulu slang for "Let's go!": "Asambe!"

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.