Nigerian singer, Divine Ikubor, aka Rema’s hit song ‘Calm Down Remix’ with Selena Gomez, has made history as the first Afrobeats song to hit 1 billion views on YouTube.
The music video, which was uploaded on Selena Gomez’s YouTube page about two years ago, has now surpassed 1 billion views, making it the first Nigerian song to achieve this milestone.
Calm Down Remix’ is also the fastest African song to reach 1 billion views on YouTube. The song, which was released on 25 August 2022, peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 and topped various music charts around the world.
The original version of the song gathered over 619 million views on the platform. In August last year, ‘Calm Down remix’ became the first African song to hit the billion mark in Spotify’s history. It currently has over 1.5 billion streams on Spotify.
Announcing the latest milestone achieved by the hit song, Mavin Records, in a post on X on, described the new landmark as a culture-defining achievement.
Apart from peaking at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100, the song also led the U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart for a record-setting 58 weeks.The song has received multiple awards, including the highly coveted ’Best Afrobeats’ award at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).
Rema released his second studio album entitled HEIS on the 11th of July 2024. The title of the album is said to be derived from the greek word for ‘numeral 1’. The album consists of 11 songs and features popular Nigerian artists such as ODUMODUBLVCK on the song ‘War Machine’ and Shallipopi on the song ‘Benin Boys’.
