Tiwa Savage: “God is using me to encourage people beyond music”

Tiwa Savage is a verifiable powerhouse. With over nineteen million Instagram followers and over three million monthly listeners on Spotify, the forty-five-year-old has truly earned her crown as the ‘Queen of Afrobeats’. But after nearly two decades in the industry — during which she’s repeatedly topped Nigerian charts, been the first woman to win the MTV Europe Music Award for Best African Act and received an honorary degree from the University of Kent — the Nigerian-born artist has recently returned to her R&B roots with a new tell-all album, This One is Personal. Released just eighteen hours before her headline show at London’s KOKO, Savage tells me over Zoom how nervous she was to get on stage and share the intimate details of her “worst” heartbreak to date. “I couldn’t perform ‘I’m done’,” she admits. “It’s still very, very real to me. I’m not ready yet.”

The Grammy-nominated artist answers my onslaught of questions about collaborations with some of the industry’s greatest artists. But none among Craig David, Burna Boy and Skepta come close to sharing the stage with her son, Jamil, who performed her song ‘On The Low’ with her at KOKO. “I pulled him up, gave him the mic and he just recited the rap,” she says. “He literally shocked everyone.” As Savage effuses about her son on our call, she’s jumping from photoshoot to dressing room to car. The artist is constantly running on a tight schedule, but if she’s tired, you wouldn’t know — though that might be her current obsession with the Korean-skincarepatented glass-skin look. “I love a good serum,” Savage sighs. “I want that glowy grease all day.” In fact, skincare might just be Savage’s next venture — just in case being the reigning Queen of Afrobeats isn’t enough of an achievement already.

Hattie Birchinall: How was performing the new album live for the first time?

Tiwa Savage: It was amazing, but I was nervous! We only announced the show in London forty-eight hours before the date. The album had just come out, so I was like, Oh my God, they’re not going to sing along to the words. Afrobeats is upbeat, you know, people are dancing, singing back to you, and the [new album] leans more into R&B. But people were really encouraging me. I’m still tryna get my head around all the words, and they were like, Sing, girl! When you do stuff that is authentic to you, real to you, you win all the time.

HB: You’ve spoken about how the new album is your most personal yet and how it was difficult to record at times. What was going on while you were writing?

TS: A very, very bad heartbreak that nearly took me out. I started a whole other project of Afrobeats club tracks, but in the studio I couldn’t connect. So I said to my team, In order to do these records, I have to get this one out. I said, It has to be a different type of album, because I’m carrying so much in me — I need to do this for me. And now, seeing how it’s connecting with people is incredible, you know?

HB: What was it like working with Skepta on ‘On The Low’?

TS: Now that was a nice break from being in the studio, pouring my heart out, to being in the studio with a really hot guy. I was like, Ah! Okay… This is a nice transition! Aside from that, he’s a talented man of his word. He said he liked it, was going to jump on it and then sent me his verse the next morning.

HB: Would you describe yourself as a hopeless romantic?

TS: People have told me that I’m not very emotional when I’m in a relationship. I don’t have to hold hands while walking down the street. I hate spooning. I don’t need flowers or rose petals on the floor. But I do like long conversations on the phone. If he’s like, Babe, my business is saying this and this, what do you think? That’s my love language — trusting you enough to be involved in the major decisions he has to make.

HB: How did it come about that your son, Jamil, performed Skepta’s section at KOKO?

TS: I didn’t have a chance to rehearse with the band, so I’m in the car on my way to the show, listening to the songs, and when it got to Skepta’s bit in ‘On The Low’, I heard him singing along. And I’m like, How do you know all the lyrics to this? You don’t know the lyrics to any other part of the song. He said, Come on, Mum, it’s Skepta. When that part of the song came on [during the show], I looked over to the side of the stage and I saw him standing there, and he gave me this ‘yeah, Mum, I’m ready’ look. So I pulled him up. Everyone was screaming, but he didn’t flinch. When we got back in the car, I told him he was very cheeky because he’s the only one who hadn’t really said congratulations. And he’s like, Mum, I’m literally the only thing trending. I told him he wasn’t getting paid.

HB: As a younger artist, you worked with legends like Mary J Blige and George Michael. Now, as a legend in your own right, the Queen of Afrobeats, are you also keen to work with emerging talent?

TS: I’ve always done that throughout my career, because it feels so fresh and exciting and keeps my ears to the ground. I worked with Taves, who’s fairly new, on this album. He’s incredible to me. I’ve been in the game for over a decade, and for young, up-andcoming artists to still want to work with me, that’s a blessing. They always say to me, Oh my God, it’s such an honour. But really, it goes both ways.

HB: At twenty-seven, you were told that you were ‘too old’ to be signed, and just recently you hit back at someone on X after he told you to stop singing, “get married and rest”. Do these experiences put pressure on you to adopt the persona of someone younger?

TS: I used to resent my age and say, Why did I start so late? But now I see that there’s actually a reason. God is using me to encourage people beyond music. You could be twenty-five and not be signed and think that’s too late, but you can always look at Tiwa Savage and be like, Yo, it could still happen to me. I don’t shy away from my age. I always find ways to talk about it, embrace it. Nothing anyone can tell me is gonna stop me from doing what I want to do. I’m gonna be singing in a wheelchair, I’m still gonna be looking hot and I can still take your man.

HB: You’ve spoken about how, early on in your career, people expected you to fit into a specific image, tagging you as ‘African Rhianna’. Is that an image you still have to push against now?

TS: No, they don’t do that anymore because I feel I’ve established myself enough. Now I hear other female artists that are coming up being called ‘the new Tiwa Savage’. I love it! My little ego is getting bigger. I’m soaking it all in.

HB: Do you find it difficult to take compliments?

TS: If you’re talking about my music, I could listen to you talk about it all the time. In fact, I would encourage it. But if someone comes up to me and says, Oh, you’re pretty, I would say, So you are you! It’s really hard for me to take because growing up as a dark skinned black woman, I didn’t hear that. So now when I hear it, I’m like, Are they just saying that because I’m a celebrity or do they really mean it?

HB: In ‘I’m Done’, you say, “I’ve got to learn how to love me first”. How is that going, and why is it important that you figure that out?

TS: It’s strange because the moment you start loving yourself, you start losing a lot of friends. I realised that I’ve been peoplepleasing for so long, and that transition of setting boundaries, of saying no, is hard. In this industry, you tend to realise that loving yourself is a lonely road because some people are only with you because of what they can get. I changed the locks in the house that I live in, I went on vacation alone for the first time this year and I’m putting myself first. I have a lot more peace of mind because I was carrying around a lot of dead weight. Initially, it felt like, Whoa, I’m losing so many people at once. Now I’m like, I don’t even miss them.

HB: As a self-proclaimed people-pleaser, were you scared to do something different with your sound outside of what you’ve become known for?

TS: Definitely. It caused me so much anxiety. I switched off my phone until [the album] dropped. My core fans know that I’m from an R&B background and that I’ve always talked about going back to that one day. That gave me a little confidence, but I wasn’t sure how the majority of people were going to accept it. If you’re true to yourself, you can’t go wrong.

HB: What does being true to yourself look like next?

TS: I want to open a music school in Nigeria, I want to go into skincare and I want to go into loungewear. I’m entering my mogul era.