Who gets the credit when a song conquers the world, the voice or the beat? Rema and Selena Gomez took “Calm Down” to number three on the Billboard Hot 100. Ayra Starr also went platinum in the UK and the US with “Rush”, yet the person who shaped its sound rarely appears on the poster. His name is Andre Vibez, and he is this week’s Producer of the Week.
Alexander Uwaifo was born on 25 September 1988 into a musical house. His father was Sir Victor Uwaifo, the Guitar Boy of “Joromi” and “Mammy Water” fame. He grew up watching his father record, rehearse and perform, and he played keyboards in his father’s band, Titibiti, before he began producing seriously around 2005. The stage name came from a bit of play with his first name: Alexander became Ander Vibez, and flipping the letters gave him Andre Vibez.
His official production career began in 2012 with “Selensele” by Leroy, and he was signed to 101 Entertainment in 2018. Benin City shaped the next chapter. He met a teenage Rema there around 2014, when Rema was part of the duo RNA, and he has called the star a younger brother ever since. When Rema was unveiled to the world in 2019, Andre has said it pushed him to work harder than ever. A meeting with Don Jazzy, set up through a cousin in 2020, opened the door to Mavin.
The breakthrough came in 2021 with “Feeling” by LADIPOE featuring BNXN, which went on to be the most streamed Nigerian song of the year and won Rap Single of the Year at the Headies. That December he took the Don Jazzy New Discovery Producer of the Year prize at the Beatz Awards. It was a year of mixed emotions, as his father died on 28 August 2021 at the age of 80.
Mavin made it official in late September 2022, announcing him as one of four new producers and two songwriters. Two months later he produced “Won Da Mo,” the label’s all-star record featuring Rema, Ayra Starr, Magixx, LADIPOE, Crayon, Johnny Drille, Boy Spyce, Bayanni and Don Jazzy. He also co-produced Ayra Starr’s “Rush,” built on a beat he says he had made months earlier. The record climbed into the hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify, went Gold in France, and earned a nomination for Best African Music Performance at the 2024 Grammy Awards, the first year the category existed. It made Ayra Starr the first Nigerian woman nominated in that category and handed Andre a Grammy-nominated credit of his own. Add Crayon’s “Too Correct,” Rema’s “Mara” and “Dirty,” and Omah Lay’s “Ye Ye Ye,” and the pattern is clear: he builds songs that artists connect with the moment they hear the beat.
Then came “Calm Down.” Co-produced with London, the song first appeared on Rema’s debut album Rave & Roses in February 2022, and the August 2022 remix with Selena Gomez turned it into a global event. It peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100, spent more than 52 weeks on the chart, earned a 4x platinum RIAA certification, and became the first Afrobeats song to pass a billion Spotify streams in September 2023. It has since crossed two billion. Andre has said he knew the record would be big when Rema recorded it, but never imagined it would travel that far.
What sets him apart is his refusal to stay in one lane. Raised on jazz, classical, R&B and soul, he layers strings, basslines and unexpected transitions over Afrobeats drums, which he insists are the engine of the genre. In a February 2026 conversation with producer Telz, he shared a habit of “reformatting his brain” every three years, dropping old assumptions and approaching sound as a student again.
He is also stepping into the light. In October 2024 he released “LIKE” with rapper Dandizzy, his debut single as an artist and the first release from Mavin’s producer compilation project. He has launched his own label, Vibez Music Factory, and has spoken of plans for a clothing brand. His credits now run past a hundred songs, and the streams attached to them are in the billions.
For Afrobeats, Andre Vibez is proof that the person behind the boards can be as essential as the voice on top, and should be accorded such importance.