Nigerian star Rema’s hit song “Calm Down” has made music history by becoming the most-streamed Afrobeats song in the US.
The music monitoring platform Chart Data announced on X that it is “the first Afrobeats song in history to earn over one billion on-demand streams in the US.”
Last year, Chart Data described the track as the “most successful African song of all time.” Music analysts from Billboard magazine attribute its success to its “melancholy slow jam with a subtle hypnotic draw,” adding that it’s the kind of song “that gets stuck deep in the back of a listener’s mind, prompting them to return again and again.”
“Calm Down” was released in February 2022 as a single from Rema’s debut album, *Rave and Roses*. Rema, whose real name is Divine Ikubor, teamed up with US singer Selena Gomez for a remix of the song a few months later. This remix also hit the billion-plays mark on Spotify.
The song made history by becoming the first African song to spend a year on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number three, making it the highest-charting song with an Afrobeats musician as the lead artist. The remix has nearly 894 million views on YouTube, making it the most-watched music video by a Nigerian artist.
Rema’s success with “Calm Down” has placed him among other prominent Nigerian Afrobeats artists such as Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido. Rema has named his unique style of Afrobeats “Afrorave.”
