"Her team is setting her up for failure" - Internet weighs in on Tyla and Charlamagne Tha God's 'colored' interview controversy 

South African singer and songwriter Tyla appeared as a guest on the iHeartRadio show The Breakfast Club on June 13 where she was asked about her ethnic identity and what it means to be a “South African colored person” by one of the hosts, Charlamagne Tha God.

Tyla did not respond to the question herself and instead turned to her representative who asked, “Can we not? Por favor? Next one, please,” while she sat in silence, smiling.

Now, over a week later, Charlamagne Tha God revealed that before Tyla’s interview, her team reportedly asked her not to ask several questions. However, he allegedly told them “no,” yet they proceeded with the interview.

“Now, when I say ‘no, I’m not going to oblige any of this,’ it is your job then, label, management, whoever, to either prepare the artist for the question or pull the interview. I’m fine with either. I already told you I’m not going to follow any of this,” the radio show host stated.

In the wake of this revelation, the internet has been having varied reactions. While some are calling out Charlamagne for refusing to stick with questions with which Tyla was comfortable, others are slamming the singer’s team for not handling the situation properly.

For instance, Instagram user @missbeelbrown commented on The Shade Room’s post on the same, writing:

“Her team is setting her up for failure.”

A netizen calls out the singer's team. (Image via Instagram/ missbeelbrown)

Here are some of the other reactions from X criticizing Tyla’s team.

“I am on his side with this tbh, she want a water down interview lol go find that type of interviewer,” a person wrote.

“He has a fair point. Her team is to blame in this situation. The interview would’ve been stale in such a controlled environment. He was doing this job and we know what his job is. The team is to blame, they gotta chill with these restrictions,” another person wrote.

“And to think I work in media. Usually, if the outlet disagrees to the requests, they you don’t have an interview! That simple! Why was that concept hard for her team to grasp?” one person asked.

“I mean, I kind of agree with what Charlamagne is saying. Tyla is fairly new. Some sh*t gonna be uncomfortable. It’s her team’s job to prep her for the interview, or not do them at all,” a netizen wrote.

Others defended Tyla and her team and slammed Tha God.

“Because y’all ask soft questions that spiral into hard conversations. Charlamagne the no god,” another netizen wrote.

“Why does Charlamagne think he’s some sort of journalist for the people?!? Talking about for the people!” an individual asked.

“He had some weird energy from the get go… Not fooling anyone,” another individual wrote.

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Charlamagne Tha God claimed that Tyla’s team gave him a list of off-limits questions

Ten days after his viral interview with Tyla, Charlamagne Tha God is now clearing the air once and for all, that he did not “blindside” the Water songstress with the “colored” question. On his June 23 episode of the Brilliant Idiots podcast, he claimed:

“All I was doing was trying to give her an opportunity to clear it up because they said that’s been a thing for her. Now here’s the thing about the label… Labels always will come and say ‘Hey can you not ask this, can you not ask that.’”

He further stated:

“Sometimes depending on what it is like if it’s something like really personal, I’ll be like ‘Sure, I [will] oblige.’ For this one, I said ‘No.’ The reason I said no, they had six things they didn’t want us to ask.”

He then listed all the questions that Tyla’s team said were off-limits including her absence from Chris Brown's tour, her recent injury, comparisons to other artists, her dating life, her ethnicity, and her interaction with streamer Kai Cenat.

Charlamagne Tha God revealed that he directly said “No!” and the Grammy winner’s team should have either prepared her for the questions or simply called off the interview, but didn’t do either, which made the situation awkward later.

He concluded by saying how he was not a “d*ck sucker” for record labels and has a job to do, which he does for the people.

Notably, before his clarification, Charlamagne received backlash from people for taking Tyla off-guard with the ethnicity question. Celebrities too called him out, including Peter Rosenberg who blamed the host for making the interview “miserable” for Tyla and her team and proceeding with the do-not-ask list.

Meanwhile, Tyla too received the heat from many, especially the African American community for pleading the fifth and accused her of denying her “blackness.”

However, she later broke her silence on the matter and released a statement on X that read:

“Never denied my Blackness, idk where that came from… I’m mixed with Black/ Zulu, Irish, Mauritian/ Indian and Colored. In Southa, I would be classified as a Colored Woman, and [in] other places I would be classified as a Black woman.”

The Getting Late singer further explained that “race” is classified differently in different parts of the world, adding that she was aware that outside South Africa, she would be recognized as “Black” but noted she was okay with it as these things were distinctly defined worldwide.

“I don’t expect to be identified as Colored outside of Southa by anyone not comfortable doing so because I understand the weight of that word outside of SA,” Tyla stated.

She wrapped up by saying she identifies as both colored in South Africa and a Black woman elsewhere around the world and was part of the culture.