Rema “Calm Down” cannot stop creating music history. The most recent award for the 24-year-old Nigerian star’s hit is that it now ranks highest among Afrobeats songs on US streaming platforms.
The music tracking platform Chart Data on X claims that it is “the first Afrobeats song in history to earn over one billion on-demand streams in the US.
Chart Data had already said last year that the song was the most successful African song of all time.
Its “melancholy slow jam with a subtle hypnotic draw” is credited by Billboard magazine music experts for its success.
This kind gets caught deep in the back of a listener’s mind and drives them to return repeatedly.
Released in February 2022, the song is a single off Rave and Roses, Rema’s debut album.
A few months later, Divine Ikubor know as Rema partnered with US singer Selena Gomez for a remix of the song, which peaked on the Spotify streaming platform with a billion-play count.
It achieved the distinction of being the first African song to remain on the Billboard Hot 100 for an entire year, reaching its maximum position at number three. This makes it the highest-charting single where an Afrobeats singer served as the main performer.
The remix, with an impressive count of about 894 million views on YouTube, presently holds the title of the most viewed music video by a Nigerian artist.
Rema’s success has propelled him into the esteemed company of renowned Nigerian Afrobeats musicians like Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido.
Rema claims to have developed his unique form of Afrobeat, which he refers to as “Afrorave”.
