R. City and Ayra Starr’s “Pray” opened with 63,029 first-day Spotify streams, per WETALKSTATS.
The song came out on October 23 through Amigo Records, a three-minute single credited to both acts on Apple Music. Release listings name Dr. Luke and KBeaZy as producers.
R. City are the brothers Theron and Timothy Thomas from St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Most people know their work without knowing their name. They wrote Rihanna’s “Pour It Up” and Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” before stepping out front in 2015 with an Adam Levine duet that became their biggest record as artists.
Ten years on, they brought in Ayra Starr. The Mavin singer brings her own reach, with the “Rush” video the first by a Nigerian woman past 600 million YouTube views, and “Pray” puts her on a slower record that Apple files under Reggae, closer to the duo’s island roots than to her usual Afropop.
Sixty-three thousand is a modest opening next to the Nigerian releases WETALKSTATS posted alongside it tonight. Mavo’s “Goyard” did 283,485 and Shallipopi’s “.com” did 113,791.
Those two are Nigerian records with home fan bases behind them, and “Goyard” had been circulating as a snippet since August. “Pray” is a cross-border single that came out on a Friday with two audiences to win at once. One knows R. City from Caribbean radio and American pop credits. The other knows Ayra from Mavin and the Lagos charts. A first day only shows where that starts.
Day two will say more.