Rema’s hit track “Calm Down” continues to make music history, with the 24-year-old Nigerian star achieving a new milestone. According to Chart Data, the song has become the first Afrobeats track to earn over one billion on-demand streams in the U.S., making it the most-streamed Afrobeats song in the country.
Last year, Chart Data had already labeled “Calm Down” as the “most successful African song of all time.” Billboard magazine music analysts attribute its success to its “melancholy slow jam with a subtle hypnotic draw,” describing it as a track that gets “stuck deep in the back of a listener’s mind, prompting them to return again and again.”
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Released in February 2022 as a single from Rema’s debut album, Rave and Roses, “Calm Down” saw a surge in popularity after Rema partnered with U.S. singer Selena Gomez for a remix. This version also hit the billion-plays mark on Spotify and became the first African song to spend a year on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number three. This made it the highest-charting song by an Afrobeats artist as the lead.
The remix’s music video, with nearly 894 million views on YouTube, is currently the most-watched video by a Nigerian artist. This success has propelled Rema into the ranks of prominent Nigerian Afrobeats artists such as Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido.
Rema, whose real name is Divine Ikubor, describes his unique style of Afrobeats as “Afrorave.”
