On “This One Is Personal”, Tiwa Savage Makes R&B Her Home Again

Tiwa Savage has always been more than a pop star. Her career has been a sustained act of shapeshifting, a refusal to be hemmed in by expectations or geography. From her explosive debut till date, she has carried herself as both architect and embodiment of a new African pop culture, one that can hold its own on the global stage. This One Is Personal, her fifth studio album, is her most revealing work yet, a collection that trades the dazzling, technicolor Afrobeats of her past for something rawer and more intimate. For all the genre-bending Savage has done over the years, this is the closest she has come to stripping things back and letting us sit with her at her most unguarded.

From global crossover act to chart mainstay — she has done it all, often at once. But This One Is Personal is different. It’s not a ploy for dominance or reach; it’s about excavation, release. Tiwa is digging into the core of her artistry, and at the center of it all lies R&B; the genre that first trained her voice, shaped her pen, and continues to haunt her musical imagination. On this album, she takes a full-bodied dive into the genre, traversing its eras and sub-genres with the ease of a person who has studied the form from within its walls. Across fifteen tracks, she shapeshifts through R&B’s many dialects: classic soul balladry, contemporary trap-soul, alternative, jazz-inflected experiments, even rap-sung confessions. What ties it all together is the conviction that this is the terrain where her voice and storytelling find their richest expression. This album is personal in subject matter, yes, but also in form — it is her clearest statement yet of who she has always been.

Before Afrobeats learned her name, Tiwa Savage was already steeped in musical architecture, lending background vocals to George Michael, Chaka Khan, Mary J. Blige and Kelly Clarkson as a teenager, and later writing with Frank Ocean and Babyface. Her musical training was the grounding that enabled her to move fluidly between Afropop and R&B, to smuggle in traditional vocal runs and the kind of melodic instincts that defined late-90s and early-2000s R&B — arguably the genre’s golden era. Listening to This One Is Personal, it’s clear she has come full circle. The Afrobeats sheen that carried Eminado, Diet, or Ma Lo is hushed here, replaced by a velvety, textured soundscape where she leans into her first love. It is less a pivot than a return.

The album begins with I’m Done, a ballad so drenched in vulnerability it almost didn’t make the album. Tiwa has admitted that she wept while recording it, unable to reconcile the pain of her ex-partner’s betrayal with the exposure of singing it aloud. Her label insisted it stay, and as an opener it sets the tone — stripped-down instrumentation, vocal runs that climb from hushed whispers to gospel growls, and a lyrical honesty about heartbreak. It is classic R&B in form and content, complete with a sprawling bridge, but it also doubles as autobiography: this is the woman who once ghostwrote for others now turning her pen inward. Where Celia and Water & Garri flirted with R&B textures on the fringes of Afropop, I’m Done insists that this is the terrain she is choosing to claim as her truest home.

From here, she moves with intent across R&B’s spectrum. Angel Dust layers rap-singing over a contemporary backdrop, echoing experiments she has flirted with since her appearance on Mavins Record’s Solar Plexus compilation. You4Me, the project’s lead single, interpolates Tamia’s So Into You, a nod to the 90s canon she grew up on, while weaving in Yoruba chants; “Ọmọ to ba re’di, lo ma gba dollar (I really like) Ọmọ to ba re’di, lo ma gba dollar (I really like)” and traditional Afrobeats drum patterns. The track is an album highlight precisely because it refuses to flatten into the nostalgia it draws from; instead, it merges memory with immediacy, the timelessness of classic R&B with the modern swagger of Afropop. On the Low is a lush duet with Skepta, whose verses play off her Brandy-hued vocal ad-libs. The influence is no accident — Tiwa has repeatedly named Brandy as her greatest inspiration, and on this track the homage is unmistakable, from its stacked harmonies to its feathery ad-libs.

As the album’s momentum builds, Tiwa stretches into contemporary modes. Holding It Down leans into the trap-inflected sultriness emblematic of 2020’s R&B. 10% dips into smoky jazz territory, the smoldering saxophone lines curling like incense as she glides languidly over the track. Twisted nods to Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing, retooling its sensuality into something brasher, while Pray No More uses melodic vocal stacking and reverberant, atmospheric production to create an almost spiritual meditation. On Addicted, featuring Taves, she plugs into the alt-Afro-R&B energy of the younger generation — terrain she first tested on Tales By Moonlight with Amaarae and Special Kinda with Tay Iwar. Taves delivers a spacey, echo-laden cadence that ricochets against the Lagos street-pop pulse, a sound pitched somewhere between The Weeknd’s moody sheen and Buju’s melodic ease — adding an otherworldly texture to the track.” By the time we get to the title track, Tiwa is at her most exposed, cataloguing grievances and heartbreak with a frankness that recalls Summer Walker’s Session 32.

The final stretch of the album is where the storytelling crystallises. You’re Not The First (You’re Just The Worst) is a masterclass in heartbreak songwriting — a ballad that brings to mind the clarity of Adele or Sam Smith in its imagery and vocal restraint. For One Night reintroduces an Afro-R&B groove, smoothing out the heaviness of the title track with a feathery-light touch, before Change, featuring James Fauntleroy, closes the project on its most experimental note. It is the perfect bookend: where I’m Done is traditionalist, Change is futuristic, an alternative R&B meditation that flirts with genre boundaries, a gentle reminder that Tiwa is not only retracing her steps but also reshaping them. The interplay between her and Fauntleroy is seamless, the production haunting, the lyrics reflective. She concludes the album where she has always thrived — in transformation.

What makes This One Is Personal striking is not just its cohesion but also its refusal to pander. This is not Tiwa Savage chasing charts or club hits. This is her weaving stories of betrayal, devotion, longing, and renewal using the medium that first shaped her as an artist. It is both a reclamation and a gamble: in an era where Afrobeats’ global currency lies in uptempo rhythms and pop gloss, she has chosen introspection and the slow burn of R&B. The gamble pays off, because Tiwa’s greatest weapon has always been her voice — supple, expressive, capable of flipping from featherlight to guttural in a single phrase. Here, that voice is finally given room to breathe.

In the end, This One Is Personal is exactly what its title promises. It is Tiwa Savage turning her gaze inward, tracing her scars and offering them up as art. It is also a reminder that African pop stars do not have to choose between commercial dominance and artistic vulnerability. She has already conquered the world’s stages; with this album, she asks us to sit with her in the quiet, to witness the woman behind the crown and to consider that perhaps, the most radical move an artist can make is to circle back home.