Afrobeats musician Rema shares his thoughts on the Nigerian music industry.
He stated his opinion that many people in the music industry are not sincere in their acts and intentions during the listening party for his sophomore album, “He Is,” held in Lagos.
Rema clarified that one of the tracks on the album, “Now I Know,” was influenced by this viewpoint.
He underlined that the music business is a complicated place with both real people and phoney people.
Rema said:
“There are a lot of fake people in the [music] industry, the industry is fake. So when people come and say ‘Yo, I love this guy,’ nobody should come at them that they’re chasing clout. No, it’s real.
“When somebody comes out it’s because they’ve seen someone that’s real among everybody in the crazy industry mixed with both the fake and the real. And that’s what this song [‘Now I Know] is all about. Now I know who dey for me. All those I loved turned enemies. Now I know who dey for me. All those I trust turned enemies.”
Recall that, Rema’s “Calm Down” makes music history, with its latest achievement being the most-streamed Afrobeats song in the US.
According to the music monitoring platform Chart Data on X, it has become “the first Afrobeats song in history to earn over one billion on-demand streams in the US.”
Last year, Chart Data already recognized the track as the “most successful African song of all time.”
Billboard magazine analysts attribute its success to its “melancholy slow jam with a subtle hypnotic draw,” noting it is the kind of song that “gets stuck deep in the back of a listener’s mind, prompting them to return again and again.”
Released in February 2022 as a single from Rema’s debut album “Rave and Roses,” the song gained further popularity when Rema partnered with US singer Selena Gomez for a remix a few months later. This remix reached the billion-plays mark on Spotify.
“Calm Down” became the first African song to spend a year on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number three, making it the highest-charting song by an Afrobeats musician as the lead artist.
The remix, with nearly 894 million views on YouTube, is currently the most-watched music video by a Nigerian artist.
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