Is Rema Confused or Does He Want to Keep Us Guessing?

We’re officially knee-deep in summer, which is to say: tis’ the season of seismic cultural events: TV series and blockbuster movies strategically released to capitalize on the chipper atmosphere of the season, global music festivals, and, not least, ubiquitous pop bangers to commemorate our collective exultation. Since 2021, Nigerian music acts have played an outsized role in shaping the global summer zeitgeist. In 2021, Ckay’s Love Nwatiti, Wizkid and Tems’ Essence emerged as some of the most prominent global summer hits of the year. The following year, Burna Boy supplied Last Last, whose mythos is similarly surreal. At festivals where Burna Boy performed the song, as well as his concerts, it was not unusual to spot members of the audience caught between the song’s jaunty bounce and its melancholy lyrics, unsure of whether to dance or cry. In 2023, Rema’s Calm Down, bore down on global pop culture with suffocating intensity, becoming the most-streamed Afrobeats song of all time and the de facto global summer anthem. 

Last year represented something of a departure from this trend, or at least a temporary pause. Despite world tours by a sprinkling of artists and festival appearances from acts like Tems, Burna Boy, and Rema, Afrobeats’ contributions to the global zeitgeist were marginal last summer. The lethargy of last year notwithstanding, this year’s race to a summer hit has started to gain some traction with interesting submissions from artists like Ayra Starr, Wizkid, Asake, Davido, and Tyla. 

On the 26th of July, Rema announced his intent to join the fray. “OK. I want ya’ll to dance this summer,” the tweet reads. Later that evening, he released a sublime cover of Shallipopi’s verse. The verse, which spans about a minute, packs some of Rema’s signature elements. There’s a surfeit of quotable lyrics, sinuous melodies that feel like a smooth ride down a cliff, and staccato flows that simulate quick-fire jabs. 

The clip, which has now been viewed some 4.5 million times on X, instantly garnered rave reviews and got the chatter mill running. Comparisons to Burna Boy’s verse on Laho II proliferated with bracing velocity, as did lyric breakdowns of the verse. But just when many had all but taken it for granted that a Rema iteration of Laho was imminent, he subverted expectations by releasing an entirely new snippet the following day. 

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As the camera slowly zooms out, we see Rema framed against an earth-toned backdrop with brown splotches. He wears a red puffer jacket, white shorts, and sneakers, and is faced laterally from the camera. It’s a scene we’ve witnessed in multiple iterations since he posted those red-tinged snippets during his Ravage era. Fiery horns that conjure the bible’s description of judgment day blast with palpable urgency as Rema twirls the side of his belt, head faced down, as though in anticipation of a cosmic event. The beat drops, and he begins chanting “Kelebu” and prancing around like a shaman in the thrall of spirits. 

“Growing up, I didn’t have a phone to create my music taste; my household had different music tastes; I listened to what everybody played,” Rema revealed in a press release. “In school parties, we used to dance to a lot of Caribbean and Francophone bounces. We didn’t care about what they were saying because most of them were not even in our local language in Nigeria. They just kept repeating one word with a fantastic instrumental backing it up, and we all danced. Making music now, I’m reliving those moments by expressing it with my art.”

In Kelebu, Rema taps the frenetic energy he evinced in his sophomore album, leaning into the Coupé Decalé, a genre popular in French-speaking African countries. The horns pack the urgency of a military song. The drums, in turn, evoke the feeling of being in a Pentecostal church service, in a praise session, frenetic drums working the crowd into the frenzied state that exists between euphoria and exhaustion. The song, which was released last Friday, has since split opinions down the middle, recalling the competing opinions—support and dissent—that arose in the early days of his Heis era. Interestingly, however, Kelebu being front and center of public discourse has not translated to the kind of domestic commercial success of Heis.

Having peaked at 13, Kelebu currently sits at number 15 on the Top 100 Nigerian tracks chart on Apple Music. That Rema offered a $10,000 prize to the winners of a dance competition he launched to promote the song has done little to bolster the commercial performance of the song, even as critical opinion of the record continues to dim. One leading theory for the song’s embattled plight is that Rema has successfully alienated several factions of his base. In the past few years, he has rapidly evolved, cycling through phases like a snake molting skin. In under two years moved from the promethean machismo of his Ravage EP to the irascible pomp of Heis, to the sultry ballads he released earlier this year—Is it a Crime and Bout U —and now to Kelebu, which is in some sense a dadaist reinterpretation of Coupé Decalé. 

In an era when going against the tide has become a rare commodity, Rema is unflinching in his commitment to repudiating tried and tested formulas in favor of lunging into uncharted territory. But is it possible that his unremitting and bracingly rapid evolution has left his listener base in a daze, woozy from having to constantly evolve in lockstep with him? While this assessment might seem to confer the situation with a pathological valence, it captures a large swath of public sentiment about Rema’s current trajectory. As I observed in another article months ago, even his unreleased music snippets seem to be pulling him in different directions. He has taken a stab at melodic Trap,  Rage rap, and a slew of other styles. One can read all of this organized chaos. He seems to relish a good challenge, and he has no shortage of confidence in his powers. Maybe his increasingly rapid pace of evolution is a way of satisfying this desire. But in his search for steeper challenges, he might be splintering and alienating huge swaths of his fan base.