The 24-year-old’s smash single is currently the most streamed Afrobeats song in the US. The song from Rema’s debut album, Rave and Roses, was made available as a single in February 2022.
A few months later, Rema—real name: Divine Ikubor—teamed up with American singer Selena Gomez on a remix of the song, which achieved the milestone of one billion plays on the streaming service Spotify.
With the caption “REMA’s “Calm Down” becomes the first Afrobeats song in history to earn over 1 billion on-demand streams in the US,” music monitoring platform Chart Data announced the news.
REMA's "Calm Down" becomes the first Afrobeats song in history to earn over 1 billion on-demand streams in the US. pic.twitter.com/K29GwYULZI
— chart data (@chartdata) June 16, 2024
With the release of ‘Calm Down’ social media was set ablaze as content creators around the world used the song in their creative projects.
‘Calm Down’ became the first African song to spend a year on the Billboard Hot 100 at number three, making it the highest-charting song which an Afrobeats musician played the lead role.
