Tunmise Olasokan
Rave Lordè. The prince of Afrobeats, Young Hov.
Before Rema started going by all these names, he was just Divine Ikubor, a child born into a christian family in Benin city. He attended his primary and secondary school education at Ighile Group of Schools in Benin.
Rema had always had a thing for music as he grew up singing and rapping while he was in secondary school, a trait that would make him one of the most successful and sort after artistes in the whole world many years after.
His father and elder brother are deceased, and Rema was left to look after his mother. Less than legal and with an hunger to desperately take care of his mum, he faced the one thing he was always good at doing; Music.
He started his music career by singing in churches but would go on to form a musical group called “ RNA” with fellow singer Alpha P. But for unknown reasons, they split and are now enjoying their solo careers.
In 2018. Rema posted a viral freestyle on instagram to D’prince’s track “Gucci Gang”. The post caught the attention of D’Prince who flew him to lagos to offer a record deal to the young talent. Rema signed a record deal with D’Prince’s Jonzing world , a subsidiary of Mavin records owned by record producer Don jazzy, in 2019.
He went on to release his self-titled debut EP “Rema” in 2019, which peaked at number 1 on Apple Nigeria.
On 21 May 2019, Jonzing world, and Mavins released the music video of “Dumebi”, a major breakout song from his self-titled EP. The video was directed by Ademola Falomo and currently has 60 million views on YouTube.
Later that summer, In 2019, one of his other most popular songs from the EP gained more popularity when it was placed on former president of the United States of America, Barack Obama’s summer playlist.
In May 2021, Rema announced he will be calling his sound “Afrorave”, a subgenre of Afrobeats with influences of Arabian and Indian music which has led to him having one of the strongest fanbases in the country known as Ravers.
After Rema signed a record deal with Jonzing World in 2019, and released his debut EP Rema. He released two more EPs, “ Freestyle EP” and “ Bad commando” before releasing his debut album Rave & Roses on 25 March 2022.
The album includes 16 tracks and features from Chris Brown, 6lack, AJ Tracey and Yseult.The album charted 10 songs on the US Billboard Afrobeats Chart following its debut week.
His single “Calm down”, including a sample from fellow Nigerian artist Crayon’s track “So Fine”, then began charting five months after its official release. It then became the most-viewed Afrobeats video on YouTube.
On August 26, 2022, he released a remix of his song “Calm Down” with Selena Gomez which peaked at number 6 on Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 on Billboard Global Excl. U.S. Chart, making it the first Afrobeats song to achieve this feat.
As of today, Rema has the most monthly listeners on Spotify in the whole of Africa with a major 40M + listeners monthly . He is also the first Afrobeats artiste to ever achieve this.
Divine Ikubor , a legend in the making.
