Tiwa Savage takes our Zoom call from Tokyo at around 7 a.m. local time, her voice sweet but groggy from having just woken up moments before. She had spent the past week in Japan for her son Jamil’s tenth birthday. “It’s both of our first time,” she tells me of the visit. “He’s never had a birthday party because all his classmates are always on summer break. So, for his tenth birthday, I was like, ‘Oh, what do you want?’ He said he wanted something to do with anime. I couldn’t think of anything else but coming to Japan.”
This is the sort of luxury one of Afrobeats’ most influential women can afford her son after fifteen years shaping the sound of the genre, nevermind the fact that the trip lands the same week that she’s releasing her fourth studio album, This One is Personal. It’s a searing confessional Savage wrote out of a real-life heartbreak that she says amounted to a “spiritual attack.” She’s brave and bold in both singing and talking about it. So, between a few professional obligations, such as this interview, her tight-knit team – essentially a family to young Jamil – made plans for them to visit places like Tokyo Disneyland and Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan. “They know that I have to be a mom first,” she says.
This One is Personal is a testament to Tiwa’s deserved longevity, and now that the singer-songwriter is 45 years old. It captures her ability to evolve authentically in a culture both obsessed with and vile towards women. With her signature blend of Afrobeats and R&B, Savage has written for Monica, sung backup for Mary J. Blige, and lent her vocals to Whitney Houston’s final album, credentials that shine across the throwback soul flavor of her latest work – she’s an icon that charted a path for women in Afropop. Nigerian singer Ayra Starr is of her lineage, as the younger act has taken on the mantle of leading lady at Savage’s former label, Mavin, which is also home to Afrobeats superstar Rema. Tems, Tyla, and Amaarae are also, in many ways, of her progeny, too.
Savage has the cuts and bruises to show for this, having been maligned for her sensuality, risqué fashion (which, at the time of her breakthrough, she says, was clothing like…denim shorts), her divorce from Jamil’s father, and a leaked sex tape. Some challenges she’s faced adjacent to Nigeria’s music industry have been more personal. In January 2024, Savage filed a police complaint in the Lagos State city of Ikeja against fellow Afrobeats veteran and former friend Davido, alleging he had threatened her. “He has also told our mutual connections to warn me to ‘be careful in Lagos because he was going to f–k me up,’” she wrote, saying that his alleged harassment began because she shared a photo of herself and Sophia Momodu, the mother of his first child, on Instagram. Unbeknownst to her, Savage tells me, the two were engaged in a conflict over custody, which, in an interview this spring, Davido explained he wanted Savage’s support for while visiting the popular radio show the Breakfast Club in April.
“Oh, wow. I vowed never to speak about this,” Savage says when I ask her what she made of Davido’s recent remarks on the issue, with him telling the Breakfast Club that, “There’s no bad blood.” He added that they hadn’t seen each other of late, but that Savage had reached out. “I love her,” he said. “I love her child. I saw him grow up. She’s an amazing person. She changed the game for females. She’ll always have that respect. That’s my sister. I would never let nothing happen to her.” Savage is still shaken. “I didn’t feel threatened. I was threatened,” she says. “That was a very hurtful thing for me because yeah, I was being dragged into something that really wasn’t none of my business, and the only thing I was doing was just being respectful to the mother of my son’s friend. It wasn’t taking sides or anything because I didn’t even know there was anything to take sides on.” She says there hasn’t been a reconciliation.
This One is Personal is defined by the kind of unwavering earnestness that she approaches such sensitive subjects with, and the tenacity, too. Here, Tiwa goes deeper on the making of the album, that rift with Davido, her controversial choice to perform at King Charles’ coronation, and what she wants for women.
On This One is Personal, it sounds like you’re reflecting not just on one romance or love, but love over the course of a lifetime.
The album really focuses on what I really went through in the last two years. It was a very, very dark period for me. I don’t think I’ve ever been vocal about stuff like that. It was really hard for me to get over this particular period. There’s a song there called “You’re Not The First (You’re Just The Worst)” meaning, of course, I’ve gone through disappointment and heartbreaks before, but this particular one was really, really hard for me. And even the subsequent events that happened after were interesting too. I have a song, “Twisted,” where [I’m] talking about being toxic. That was after the breakdown of this particular relationship that I’m talking about. I ended up being the toxic one and I was looking at myself like, “Yo, why are you acting like this? This isn’t you.”
What made that relationship so devastating and so impactful?
To be honest, I still don’t know. For some reason, this one, it was just different. It felt more like such a strong spiritual attack. I know it’s deep to say that. It really felt like this relationship was intentional to destroy something in me. It didn’t feel just like, “Oh, it was just a heartbreak.” It felt like I was heading towards something and then this thing came to really distract me or break me down. It wasn’t even just about the relationship. It felt like a lot of things around me were just crumbling based on it. I withdrew from a lot of my childhood friends, from a lot of my team.
I would do things that I wouldn’t normally do. I wouldn’t let people know if I was traveling somewhere. There’s a song there featuring Skepta called “On The Low,” because I wanted to protect it so much. I didn’t want people to find out who I was seeing, and at this time I really, really wanted it to work. So literally, every single song was about it.
What did making the album clarify for you?
Oh, there was so much coming out of it. I think that’s why I started pouring so much into my son, into this project. It became more than music to me, it became more than [creating] an R&B-type album. It felt so necessary for me to do it for other people that might be going through stuff. Being an Afrobeat [Savage says it without the “S” customary to the modern genre] artist, I don’t think we have any artist that really touched on something this deep in terms of heartbreak. Afrobeat is very fun. Making this album revealed to me how there was a gap. I’m not saying there isn’t music in Afrobeat that does this, but I didn’t think there was enough of it.
It’s so interesting to hear about “On The Low” in this context because I’ve listened to that song like, “Oh, this is so cute.” To hear that it was instead the beginning of something heartbreaking is a bit jarring because it does still have a bit of that levity and sensuality that a lot of Afrobeats has.
This is why these interviews are important. I’ll give you an example, “Brown Sugar,” D’Angelo; I found out that it wasn’t about love, it was about marijuana. But you won’t think of that. You just think it’s a sexy song about a girl or whatever, then you go back and it just makes you even love it even more and think of how genius that song is. And yeah, [“On the Low”], some people would listen or read this article and be like, “Oh, wow. It was a lot deeper than what we thought,” but it’s still a song that you can enjoy and groove to.
Where have you actually landed on love? The first track, “I’m Done,” is a big proclamation, but throughout that album, you seem to be reconsidering it.
“Change,” which is the last record, featuring James Fauntleroy, says, “Let me change to love you.” And people might think I’m talking about that first person in the first record, “I’m Done,” but I’m talking about God. I’m like, “You’re the only person that got me through this. I know you’ve been speaking to me over the years.” I’m finally like, “You know what? I get it, God. Let me change.” That concludes the whole story of the project; God is the ultimate love and that’s where I landed, to change back to what he intended me to be.
Are there other records of yours that you intended to have a double meaning?
There’s a record called “Hold Me Down ,” a record on my Sugarcane EP. That was the same EP that had “Ma Lo.” That record was about weed actually. My core fans would really know that record, but they might not know that its about weed. I literally was inspired by D’Angelo. When I heard what “Brown Sugar” was about, I went into the studio and I wrote about my first experience with weed. When you hear the song, you think it’s me talking about my first experience with a certain guy, but it’s really about my first experience with trying it and not knowing that you have to pass it around.
I’m 31 and from an African family, so I’m getting the marriage and babies questions. But I think that often, when I look at women like you or like Tracee Ellis Ross, I don’t feel this pressure to be coupled or start a family in a limited timeframe. I’m wondering if getting older affected how you felt about the relationship that ultimately led to this album.
I still love love after all is said and done, but I’m at the point where I’m not going to sacrifice or jeopardize my peace of mind, because I almost lost my mind. For other people, I still love love. I still pray for it. I still want people to experience childbirth. I really want to be an advocate for women’s egg freezing. I think people don’t talk about it enough, and women don’t realize the importance of it. It should be affordable for women to freeze their eggs if they want because as we get older, our egg reserves reduce. You know how when you’re 18 or 19, you have to start doing your pap smear? I think they should make that important for women too.
With your advocacy for egg freezing, where are you based these days?
Right now, I am based between London and Nigeria. I have a place in both places.
In the US, we’re seeing this bend towards authoritarianism, and so much of that being around women’s autonomy. I think the idea of us being introduced to the idea of freezing our eggs as young women and being given affordable options to do so would be lovely, but it’s like there’s this conservative movement that wants us to be chained to men and not have the independence the vote and right to control our bodies afforded us. I wonder if you feel cognizant of how much resistance there’d be to an idea like accessible egg freezing?
Well, I can only really speak from my environment. Nigeria is still very geared towards protecting men. I feel like women are still marginalized a lot in my culture. A conversation like this is very hard to have, even with other women. A few women that I know are still hiding the fact that they had to use a surrogate to have a baby. The women I’m talking about aren’t doing it because they’re just trying to keep their figure. They physically couldn’t carry and they still feel shame. They have to hide it because society is going to judge them, crucify them, or tell them, “You’re playing God and this isn’t right.”
A man in my culture can still marry multiple women, and it’s not that frowned upon, but a woman decides to be a mother and they’re like, “How can you do this bringing a child up in a single parent home?” I’m thinking, “Well, we don’t decide that.” Most women, I think, would love to be in a marriage, be in love, have their children and live happily ever after, but sometimes things happen. Sometimes women are widowed or they have to go through a divorce, but they still have to pick up the pieces. It really breaks my heart to see that women in the part of the world where I’m from are not really supported like that. Conversations like egg freezing and surrogacy, it’s even harder to have because we haven’t even gotten the basics yet.
I’m sure you are asked about women and Afrobeats and Afropop all the time, but I’m very curious if there are experiences that you see newer women in music have that you wish that you could have experienced earlier in your career?
Oh yeah, of course. Just being free with their body, being sensual or sexual. I had my music videos being banned because I wore denim shorts or a body suit that was too clingy. It’s not like I was wearing thongs or anything, but they wouldn’t play it on TV or even on radio. But then you had my male colleagues who would have videos with girls in bikinis, and nothing is being said. They had very sexually explicit videos. It was really hard at that time because I just couldn’t understand me having tattoos [being] such an issue, and male artists have so much, and it’s so cool.. Or me ending up being a single mom, where it wasn’t by choice. I actually did it the right way. I had my child in the covenant of a marriage, but we have male artists that have multiple baby moms.
It never stops by the way. The challenge never stops. People say to me, “How do you feel now that there are more female artists coming up?” I love it. I don’t think it’s enough. [To make her point, Savage tasks me to publish the number of women who make the Nigerian charts on digital streaming platforms. On the Spotify chart of the 50 top songs in Nigeria dated August 22, where many songs feature multiple collaborators, only four women total appeared. On Apple Music’s Top 100: Nigeria chart dated August 27, only two women placed.]
I think the fact that you were asked to perform at King Charles’ coronation, on one hand, signals how far Afrobeats has come – especially that, of all people in the genre, a woman is chosen to represent it there. But on the other hand, there was controversy about that choice as a Nigerian woman choosing to celebrate this colonial power. How have you reconciled that now?
I think for me, it was celebrating. I didn’t want a situation where we weren’t represented. I wasn’t thinking of it as me being a female. I tried to be as humble as possible, but I’m like, “Hey, which Afrobeat artist are you really going to call to handle singing with an orchestra?” Do you know what I’m saying? I’m pretty much one of the only few people that can probably pull that off, not to toot my own horn, but toot-toot. I was like, “I’m going to get on this stage and I’m going to kill it, and I’m going to show them that Afrobeat or African artists can do this.”
I’m curious about your perspective on the other side of that, where it’s like, do we actually need to be celebrating the legacy of this institution when it has caused so much harm in the place that we’re from? How have you thought about that?
Yeah, in hindsight. Because I moved to the U.K. when I was really young, that was a very big part of me growing up as well. When I mentioned it to my mom, I just saw how happy she was that I would be called to do that. That was all I could think about, representing us and the joy on my family’s face as immigrants in the U.K. having a voice on that stage. I didn’t really think too much about the history. I just looked forward.
Do you have a different perspective on it now?
I think sometimes when things happen, the only way to move forward is to reconcile, and that’s not possible if you don’t come to the table to do that. I still strongly believe that. I don’t want to go too deep into it, because I know this is about music, but I do want to touch on it in terms of what was ours or what is ours.
Touching on the Year of the Return in Ghana, a lot of Africans were like, “No, foreigners shouldn’t be allowed to come back.” And I’m like, “Well, how are we going to bridge that gap if we don’t come together?” It’s really important for us to reunite with our African-American brothers and sisters and welcome them and let them know that they are Africans. A lot of non-African-Americans that came wanted to learn about what their ancestors had done – if we shut them out, how would they understand the gravity of what their people did to our people?
What do you think is the state of African pop music?
I don’t think it’s just specific to Afropop or Afrobeat; I think music is getting to that stage where there won’t really be much genres. I think there’s so much fusion now. Even in R&B, it’s not traditional R&B like when I was listening to R&B, when I was listening to Joe, SWV, and Mary J. Blige. Now, R&B is kind of like a fusion. I think a lot of African artists don’t want to feel boxed in.
There was a period where Afrobeats artists were defining their own genres. Like CKay called his sound “Emo-Afrobeats.” Burna Boy called his “Afrofusion.” Fireboy DML called his “Afro-Life.” But then on the other hand, you have someone like Rema who is like, “No, this word Afrobeats is important, and there are these actual sonic characteristics and traits of this genre that are worth preserving and celebrating.” I’m curious about what you think about the balance of those two things.
I want to respect “Emo-Afrobeats,” “Afro-Life,” or whatever they want to call it. What people don’t understand is that the music that comes out of Africa is so vast. It’s very difficult to just label it Afrobeat or Afropop, because you go to Tanzania and it’s a different sound. Even within Nigeria, you have Flavor, you have Phyno, you have Olamide, you have Tems. Just within that one country, you have so many different types of sounds. You have Fela, you have King Sunny Adé, you have highlife, you have jùjú music. It’s even hard for us to put a label on it because we grew up listening to so much. We also grew up listening to hip-hop. We grew up listening to pop. We grew up listening to Sade Adu, Coldplay. So musically, it’s hard for us to label it one thing. I think that’s why you’re getting so many sub-genres of this thing.
What is your son’s experience as an African young man? How is it different from how you grew up? What excites you about it? I mean, you are in Japan.
I’m very intentional with what I want him to experience. I always joke about this, that African men, whenever they travel somewhere, they never want to try anything. They just want to find an African restaurant. Or once he finds something he likes, like chicken wings, he is never going to not eat chicken wings. Even if he goes to an Italian restaurant, he’s going to be like, “Do you guys have chicken wings?” So I wanted my son to experience the world, coming to places like Japan, we’ve traveled to Marrakesh, Morocco, just even simple things like opening up his taste palate. While he really does appreciate African food – he loves jollof rice and stuff like that – he also loves sushi. He’s tried Turkish food. He’s tried so many different things. He’s also learned to experience and appreciate different cultures and not just be so closed-minded, like, “This is how we do it in Africa.” As an African man, I want him to uphold his values. He’s very proud. Most Africans are very proud of being African. Coming out to Tokyo, him learning just how polite they are – everything is “Arigato” and they’re bowing their heads – he’s asking questions and he’s loving little things like that. I want him to be very world-traveled and appreciate life and in turn, appreciate women.
Because I’m such a big fan of both you and Davido, and because this issue, as far as he has described it, had to do with your relationship with each other’s families, I am curious: There was this police complaint filed in 2024 where you alleged that he threatened you. Davido has now done an interview saying he would never harm you and loves your family. Where are you now in that situation?
Oh, wow. I vowed never to speak about this.
It’s up to you. Whatever you want to say is totally fine.
I think it’s unfortunate that it got to where it did, but I want to also reiterate to people that my son is in the same school as his first daughter. They’re actually in the same class. They went to the same nursery together. They’re now in the same school together. So, naturally, I’m going to run into his child’s mother at school recitals and stuff. I have to be very, very cordial, especially because our kids were friends. It was very unfortunate that I was dragged into something or made to feel like I picked a side when I didn’t even know anything that was happening personally. It’s like I go to school to pick up my son, and I see Imade’s [Davido’s daughter] mom, am I not going to say, “Hey”? I say hey to all the other moms, and we have conversations just as moms: “Oh, what are you guys doing for the summer? Hey, can my kid and your kid have a play date? It’s such-and-such’s birthday coming up.”
It’s all well and good to say, “Oh, we’re [siblings],” but I was really heartbroken because I was dragged into something or made to believe that I had taken sides when I hadn’t. All I was doing was being respectful to the mother of my son’s friend.
His comment on it was that the fallout came from a custody dispute with the mother.
How is that my business? I’m just finding out, like the rest of the world is finding out that that was even an issue.
So you felt threatened before you even knew that that was the context?
I didn’t feel threatened. I was threatened. And I’m like, “Wait, what’s going on? Where’s all this coming from?” And then I’m finding out that there’s been an issue. To be fair, she didn’t let me know, and she shouldn’t either because it’s really none of my business. I didn’t know the extent of what was happening legally, whatever. I wasn’t privy to that. And even if I still knew, I still wouldn’t stop being respectful to her. Does that make sense?
No, it does. Thank you for being so forthright and so clear.
The kids should never have to suffer for what the parents are going through.
Have you seen or heard his full commentary on the Breakfast Club about the situation?
I am so hurt that I don’t even pay attention.
So to you, there hasn’t really been a reconciliation?
No.
I can tell that it’s heavy.
Yeah. Because anything to do with my child , I just try and protect it. That put a strain on my son’s relationship with their daughter, and that was very sad for me to see that unfold because the kids should never be caught in the crossfire.
I meant to ask you earlier – what was your son’s reaction when he found out that you were going to Japan? How did that unfold?
I was trying to make it a surprise, but he heard conversations with me trying to get my visa, and he’s like, “Are you going to Japan?” And I’m like, “I might be.” He’s like “No way. Oh my God, I want to go to Japan. I really want to go. I’m going to be on summer vacation. I really want to go!” So I just said, you know what? Let me just tell you: “Yes, you’re going to come with me,” because it was getting annoying [laughs]. Now, it switches to, “When are we going? How many more weeks? How many more days? How many more hours? Can we get on the plane now? Can we go tomorrow?” And now, we’re leaving [Tokyo] today and he’s like, “I don’t want to go.” [I’m like], “No, you’re leaving, you’re going back to school. I have an album to release.”
I think that’s a perfect point for me to let you go and enjoy the rest of your morning. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you would like to?
Just the next phase of my life outside of music.
I saw that you’re opening a music school?
I’m working on it. I want to start with scholarships to Berklee College of Music. I went [there], so I want to give Nigerian musicians the opportunity to have that or experience that. I’m working very closely with Berklee.
I’m really obsessed with skincare, even more so than makeup. I love skincare, and I love hair care as well, taking care of our natural hair. And I’ve started this journey of going back to my short hair, like my pixie cut, and realizing how I have to maintain a healthy hairstyle, even though people think that having short hair is so easy to manage, and it really isn’t. All things to make the Black woman feel beautiful naturally, even before we apply the wigs or the makeup, is what I really want to go into. I call it my mogul era. I really want to step into that. I love what Rihanna’s doing. I want to represent African women as well, and show people that African women can be millionaires and billionaires.
Have you gotten a chance to have a meeting of the minds with Rihanna?
No, we’ve never met. Never interacted socially, not even social media. Nothing.
Well, we’ll love to see it when you guys have your products on shelves next to each other.
Right. Amen.
