Seven years ago this month, Don Jazzy pressed send on an announcement that would alter the trajectory of African music. A nineteen-year-old from Benin City, slight in frame and enormous in confidence, had just signed to Jonzing World, D’Prince’s imprint and a subsidiary of Mavin Records. His name was Divine Ikubor. The world would come to know him simply as Rema.
Today, on the seventh anniversary of that signing in March 2019, Rema is not merely a star. He is a phenomenon, the architect of a sonic identity he calls Afro-Rave, the man behind the most-streamed Afrobeats song in history, a Grammy nominee, and the most-watched Nigerian artist on YouTube. Let’s venture into a complete story of how he got there.
2018 — A Freestyle That Changed Everything
Before there was a deal, there was a video. In 2018, Rema, then performing in churches in Benin City alongside his collaborator Alpha P, posted a freestyle on Instagram set to D’Prince’s track “Gucci Gang.” The clip found its way to D’Prince himself, who was struck enough to fly the teenager to Lagos immediately. What D’Prince heard in that freestyle was not just talent; it was a fully formed artistic instinct in a teenager who had never recorded professionally.
The loss of his father and elder brother in his early years had shaped a young man with something urgent to say. Rema had been singing and rapping since his secondary school days at Ighile Group of Schools in Edo State. By the time D’Prince came calling, he was ready.
March 2019 — The Signing and the Debut
Rema signed with D’Prince’s Jonzing World, a subsidiary of Mavin Records, in early 2019. By March of that same year, Don Jazzy publicly announced the signing and the speed of what followed was breathtaking. Within weeks of the deal being formalised, Rema released his self-titled debut EP on 22 March 2019, a four-track project produced entirely by Ozedikus.
The lead single, “Iron Man,” was an Afro-Rave ballad laced with Bollywood-inflected melodies, immediately polarising and immediately unforgettable. Its companion track, “Dumebi,” became the breakout record that announced him to the continent. The music video, released on 21 May 2019, has since accumulated over 85 million views on YouTube. The debut EP topped Apple Music’s Nigerian charts, and within months, then-US President Barack Obama placed “Iron Man” on his summer playlist, a co-sign that reverberated across the entire industry.
2019 to 2021 — Building the Sound and Defining Afro-Rave
Rather than rush a debut album, Rema spent the following two years releasing a series of EPs that allowed him to experiment and hone his signature. His “Rema Freestyle” collection shaped trap-influenced Instagram freestyles into radio-ready singles. His third project, “Bad Commando,” in late 2019, pushed his sound further, finding the precise balance between Afrobeats rhythms, Arabian and Indian musical influences, and Western sub-genres that would become his calling card.
In May 2021, he formally named this fusion “Afro-Rave,” crystallising a sonic brand that was entirely his own. He also landed on the FIFA 21 soundtrack and began building fashion and branding partnerships, signalling that the Rema project had outgrown music alone. His fanbase, the Ravers, was growing and deeply loyal, a community built around music that did not sound like anything else in the world.
March 2022 — Rave & Roses and the Song That Took Over the World
On 25 March 2022, Rema released his debut studio album, Rave & Roses, through Jonzing World, Mavin, and Interscope Records, a 16-track statement featuring collaborations with 6lack, Chris Brown, AJ Tracey, and Yseult. In its debut week, the album charted ten songs simultaneously on the US Billboard Afrobeats Chart.
The second single from the project, “Calm Down,” had been released on 11 February 2022 and was already generating significant momentum, sitting top 20 on Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits and top 10 on Pop Rising, when on 25 August 2022, Selena Gomez joined Rema on a remix. The explosion that followed was historic.
The “Calm Down” remix peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100, making it the highest-charting Afrobeats song in the chart’s history at that time. It reached number one on the Billboard Global Excl. US chart and topped US Pop Airplay, the first Afrobeats song ever to achieve the latter. It went number one on the Canadian Hot 100, topped the newly launched Official MENA Chart, and charted top five in Belgium, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands. In the United Kingdom, it peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart. It also spent ten weeks at the summit of the US all-genre Radio Songs chart.
On 7 November 2022, Rema was recognised for surpassing one billion streams worldwide, celebrated live at his London concert. Later that year, he won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Afrobeats Video.
2023 — 58 Weeks, 64 Weeks, One Billion Views
The scale of “Calm Down’s” dominance only became clearer across 2023. The remix led the US Billboard Afrobeats Songs chart for a record-setting 58 consecutive weeks. It became the first Afrobeats song to log a full year, 57 weeks total, on the Billboard Hot 100. It set the all-time record for most weeks spent on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart at 64 weeks, surpassing Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” which had held the record at 63 weeks. Rema’s Rave & Roses makes history on the U.S. Billboard World Albums chart
In April 2023, Rema released Rave & Roses Ultra, a deluxe edition of the album that made history as the first African album to cross two billion streams on Spotify. According to the IFPI Global Music Report, “Calm Down” was the second best-selling global single of 2023, with 1.89 billion subscription stream equivalents worldwide, widely regarded as the biggest and most successful Afrobeats song of all time.
At the Billboard Music Awards in 2023, he won Top Afrobeats Song. At the MTV VMAs, he and Selena Gomez received nominations for Song of the Year and Best Collaboration, with Rema again winning Best Afrobeats Video.
July 2024 — HEIS: A Grammy Nomination and a Cultural Declaration
On 11 July 2024, Rema released HEIS, his second studio album, issued through Mavin Records, Jonzing World, and Interscope Records. The title, drawn from the Greek word for “number one,” was a statement of intent. The 11-track project features Shallipopi and Odumodublvck and was preceded by the singles “Benin Boys” and “Hehehe.” Where Rave & Roses was an internationalist’s gesture toward the world, HEIS looked inward, rooted in Edo culture, darker in texture, drum-driven, and uncompromising.
Critics responded warmly. Rolling Stone called it “the strongest contender for the best Afrobeats album of the year.” NME praised Rema as “a true rhythm scientist.” The album debuted at number two on the TurnTable Top 100 Albums chart, climbed to number one, and remained on the chart for 29 weeks with over 104 million streams. Several tracks including “Ozeba,” “Hehehe,” “Benin Boys,” and “Yayo” reached the Nigerian Official Top 100. HEIS: How Rema tweaked Afrobeats’ Culturescape
In August 2024, “Yayo” earned Rema a second placement on Barack Obama’s summer playlist, his first being “Iron Man” in 2019, cementing a remarkable cross-generational and cross-cultural reach that very few artists anywhere in the world can claim.
The Recording Academy’s nomination of HEIS for Best Global Music Album at the 67th Grammy Awards marked Rema’s first Grammy nomination, making him one of the youngest Nigerian artists ever to reach that threshold. The album also won Album of the Year at the Trace Awards & Festival 2025.
2025 — World Tours, New Music & a Throne Consolidated
Entering 2025, Rema released “Baby (Is It a Crime)” on 7 February, a single sampling Sade’s 1985 classic “Is It a Crime” that quickly became one of the most-streamed Nigerian songs of the year. A second single, “Bout U,” followed on 11 April 2025.
The year also saw Rema headline Coachella in April 2025 and announce the HEIS World Tour, a 23-date global run spanning arenas and festival stages across North America and Europe. By this point, he had become the most-streamed Nigerian artist on YouTube, with the “Calm Down” remix video having crossed one billion views, a milestone that places him in extraordinary company as an African artist.
The Legacy, at Seven
The numbers are staggering, but they don’t even tell the whole story. Statistics cannot capture what it meant for a generation of African listeners to hear “Dumebi” in March 2019 and feel that something new had arrived, something that wore Afrobeats’ rhythmic heritage confidently while pointing it toward terrain no one had mapped yet. Rema did not simply ride a wave. He helped create one.
His partnership with Mavin Records has been, by any measure, one of the most successful artist-label relationships in African music history. Don Jazzy and D’Prince gave him infrastructure; Rema gave them a global identity. The deal proved that Afrobeats could not only cross markets but dominate them, that a twenty-year-old from Benin City could out-chart Harry Styles on Pop Airplay and earn a Grammy nomination before his twenty-fifth birthday.
As Rema himself said at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards, accepting his Top Afrobeats Song award: “This honor is a celebration of unity and the global domination of Afrobeats.” Seven years in, the domination is well underway, and by every available signal, it has barely started.