In September 2023, Spotify announced that Rema’s “Calm Down” had passed one billion streams. No song led by an African artist had done it before.
By then the song had become one of the biggest hits in the world. The remix with Selena Gomez peaked at number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for 52 weeks. It topped Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart, a first for an African artist, and the RIAA later certified it multi-platinum.
A song from Rave & Roses
Divine Ikubor, known as Rema, is from Benin City in Edo State. He signed to Jonzing World, a Mavin Records imprint run by D’Prince, and broke out in 2019 with “Dumebi” and “Iron Man”, the second of which appeared on Barack Obama’s summer playlist that year. That early co-sign gave the teenager an audience beyond Nigeria before he had released an album.
“Calm Down” appeared on his debut album, Rave & Roses, released in March 2022. The original version was a hit in Nigeria and across Africa, with its easy melody and a story about a girl he spots at a party. The song’s hook, “Baby, calm down, calm down”, was simple enough to sing in any language.
The Selena Gomez remix
The remix with Selena Gomez was released in August 2022. It took the song from African hit to global pop record. Gomez sang a new verse, and the combination worked on radio in the United States, Europe and Latin America as well as on TikTok, where the song became the backing track for countless videos.
The remix reached number 3 on the Hot 100, making it Rema’s first entry on the chart and Gomez’s ninth top ten. It also performed strongly in the UK, across Europe and in India.
The billion
The billion-stream mark on Spotify is one of the clearest measures of global reach in modern music. Only a small share of songs ever reach it. When “Calm Down” joined, it opened a door for African music on the platform, and Spotify marked the moment with an announcement of its own.
Rema won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Afrobeats in 2023, the first year the category existed, for “Calm Down”.
What came after
Rema followed with HEIS in July 2024, a harder, more experimental album that divided some fans but was praised by critics. It showed he was not trying to make “Calm Down” again. He has since toured arenas around the world, and his live shows draw crowds far beyond the Nigerian diaspora.
The hook asked a girl at a party to calm down. It ended up playing at weddings, football stadiums and shopping malls on every continent, more than a billion times on one app alone.
