Backstage With... Tiwa Savage, The Queen Of Afrobeats Bringing The Heat To London’s Meltdown Festival 

It’s a washed-out Wednesday in May. We’re at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall in London and the sky is stubbornly grey, the air lukewarm at best. In a modest backstage dressing room, we wait – quiet, expectant – for Tiwa Savage.

She arrives straight from a show-stopping guest spot on Usher’s Past, Present, Future UK tour, where she joined him on stage for her smash hit Somebody’s Son. And when she walks in, it’s as if she brings the sun with her. There’s a natural electricity in the room – wide smiles, outstretched arms, warm hugs. She’s full of apologies for being late, but honestly, when you’ve just been performing with Usher, who’s counting the minutes?

Today, though, the Queen of Afrobeats is here with her sights set on Meltdown Festival, curated this year by Little Simz. “I’m honoured to be representing Afrobeats at Meltdown this year,” she says, grinning. “I can’t wait to bring the heat.”

It’s a long way from where her story began. Tiwa Savage’s journey to this moment – with 19 million Instagram followers, a global fanbase, a discography of three studio albums, one compilation album and 23 singles, philanthropic work for women survivors of sexual assault in Nigeria and invitations to perform at events like the King’s coronation – has been anything but ordinary. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, she moved to London when she was 11, finishing high school here before a perceptive music teacher encouraged her to take her talent seriously. While studying, she began landing gigs as a backing vocalist, regularly disappearing from student life to tour with the likes of George Michael, the Spice Girls, Mary J. Blige and Whitney Houston. In 2006, she also participated on The X Factor, where she got to the final 24 before being evicted in 12th place. “The early days were amazing. Not a care in the world – I really thought I had it all!” she laughs.

But it was those formative experiences, along with her father’s push to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, that helped her refine her voice and shape her artistic identity. In time, her path led back to the R&B and Afrobeats influences that had defined her childhood. “My music has always been a fusion of the two cultures I grew up with and all the music I was exposed to in both places. It’s never just been one thing,” she says.

That fusion wasn’t just musical – it was a mindset. Straddling two worlds meant learning how to navigate them both, and Tiwa quickly realised that talent alone wouldn’t open doors. Though one thing she has never needed is a stage name. Born Tiwatope Omolara Savage, she fully leans into the strength her name implies – a savage spirit, necessary to survive and thrive in the music industry. “It wasn’t easy,” she admits. “Afrobeats has always been very male-dominated. It still is, to be honest. I had to force the labels in Lagos to take me seriously, to convince them that I was worth investing in.”

Labels questioned whether a woman artist could really ‘sell’ in a scene where male artists dominated both airwaves and stages. On top of that, Tiwa was often caught between cultural expectations of how women ‘should’ behave and the bold, global pop star she was determined to become. But her determination paid off. By refusing to compromise on her sound or image, she’s carved out space for other women to follow, both in Nigeria and across the wider Afrobeats scene. Today, artists like Ayra Starr and Tems often cite her as a key inspiration – proof that Tiwa’s fight wasn’t just for herself, but for a whole new generation of women artists. Resilience, for Tiwa, has always been part of the job – a driving force fuelling her rise in an industry that didn’t necessarily have space for women, let alone one determined to claim the spotlight.

It’s artists like her who have helped to carve out space for Afrobeats on the global stage, elevating the genre to stand alongside pop, R&B and soul on the world’s biggest platforms. “Hearing people singing my songs in places as far away as New Zealand, that’s what does it for me,” she says. “That’s when I really feel it: hearing my music travel like that.” She’s performed across continents, bringing joyful, dance-filled energy to every stage she steps on. But today, the Tiwa Savage sitting before us feels ready for reinvention. After years of building a powerhouse career, she’s turning inward, ready to peel back the layers and explore a more vulnerable, creatively daring version of herself. That next chapter begins with Meltdown.

“I know Simz is very musical, so I want to perform my songs in a way people have never heard before for this performance,” she says. “It’s going to be very different.” For Meltdown, Tiwa will share the stage with an exciting line-up of talent, including jazz saxophonist Nubya Garcia, multi-instrumentalist Jon Batiste and vocalist-percussionist Yukimi Nagano. It marks a more experimental turn – an opportunity for Tiwa to reconnect with herself as both artist and performer. And it comes at a pivotal moment: she’s also preparing to release her next album, This One Is Personal, later this year – a project that promises to reveal a more vulnerable, introspective side of Tiwa Savage. As a genre, Afrobeats is known for its fun-loving, dance-inducing beats, but this time Tiwa is taking a step away from the dance floor and pushing her fans to delve into their feels.

This time, she’s digging deep, writing from her own experiences, from things she’s really been through, which you can already get a sense of with the release of the first single, You4Me – “People are gonna be like, ‘Damn, Tiwa! He did that to you?’” she says, laughing – her signature wit and infectious giggle lighting up the moment, just as they have throughout our entire conversation.

As Tiwa steps into a new chapter at Meltdown this Saturday, what’s most striking is her balance: bold, self-assured, yet unmistakably grounded. She beams with pride – not just in her own journey, but in the powerful wave of femme energy now rising through Afrobeats, a movement she’s helped to shape. Watching her now, you sense it clearly: Tiwa is exactly where she’s meant to be. It feels less like she’s reaching a peak – and more like the start of something even bigger.

Backstage With... Tiwa Savage

Join us backstage with Tiwa at the Royal Festival Hall, as she prepares for her Meltdown show in our full video interview, as we hang out with Tiwa at the Royal Festival Hall as she prepares for her Meltdown show. She talks working with Little Simz, what it’s like to play for her home crowd and the women Afrobeats artists that continue to inspire her...