Moviestar: How Rema Resurrected the Overlooked Demons of His HEIS Era

The portrait of the male Afrobeats superstar as an entity most alive within the escapist triad of money, women, and recreational substances has been expertly painted and maintained to the extent of becoming a monoculture. Since down-to-earth Ajegunle singers took the backseat, and that ‘big boy’ brand of flashy Nigerian pop by the ‘D’banjs and Olu Maintains’ of this world held the country’s airwaves to ransom, every generation has chased this archetype, rarely achieving more than a fleeting effect. 

Between 2019 and 2021, a class of male artists (Rema, Fireboy DML, Joeboy, Omah Lay, BNXN, Lojay, Bella Shmurda) emerged in this image, but with an added depth that until then existed only in Alternative and R&B circles. These newcomers sang about flashy lifestyles and escapades in iced out couture, while also exhibiting greater awareness of the cost of upholding this ideal. They explored themes like mental health struggles and existentialism, and brought new dimensions to the subject of romance. They were and still are escapists. However, the veneer of invincibility that defined previous musicians no longer serves as  their defining brushstroke. 

On records like Fireboy’s Airplane Mode (Apollo), Omah Lay’s safe haven (Boy Alone), and Bella Shmurda’s contraband (Hypertension), this reckoning comes to life, wrapped around a roll of marijuana or settled in the silence of separation. Minimalist production aligns with potent confessions for this generation’s leading men. Most of the time, such records do not perform well numbers-wise and are engaged by a small share of younger listeners facing their own difficulties who prefer to spend the night in rapturous pleasure. Even as they become established acts approaching a decade in the industry, and have influenced several others afterwards, it’s music we don’t get so often. It’s the thing with age, one supposes. You spend your late teens and early 20s as a celebrity, at some point, the pressures of aging in the spotlight makes being candid more difficult. 

This backdrop makes it easier to understand why a song like French pianist Sofiane Pamart and Rema’s Moviestar holds so much importance. Released a week ago, on Thursday 16 April, 2026, Moviestar is one of 11 singles off Pamart’s 11th studio album, MOVIE. Pamart curated an eclectic lineup of features, including Haitian rapper and Fugees frontman Wyclef Jean, Latin singer J Balvin, Australian pop act Sia, 2000s sensation Nelly Furtado, Franco-Algerian songwriter Rilès, Eritrean singer RIMON, and American basketball superstar Jimmy Butler. (If you wonder why a pianist has an album featuring a world famous basketball player or if it fits,  you will just have to listen to the album. Hint: It does fit). 

Butler is featured on Midnight in California, which comes right before Rema’s and gives a bit of context to the singer’s outpouring of emotions. Over pensive piano chords and a string orchestra, Butler speaks about being a kid, thinking back on what he had to do to make his dreams come true, what his life looks like now, and how midnights from both his younger and older perspectives appear different—having lost a father and then becoming one. While the narrative of age inspiring fresh outlooks is common among middle-age celebrities, it doesn’t always take this dual reflective shape. 

It is this contemplation on the cost of adulthood, more specifically an adulthood lived out on television screens and concert stages, that ties both records together, making Rema’s admissions hit hard. Rema is arguably the biggest artist of his generation, a placement he’s gone ahead to recognise on wax on more than one occasion, like the “No more big three, there’s now a big four” line on 2024 smash hit OZEBA. In the course of his career, Rema’s experimental leanings have been tempered with the brand of vulnerability synonymous with his generation, much so that longtime fans wouldn’t be surprised by the existence of a song like this. 

Rema packs difficult themes of identity struggles, familial trauma, absent childhood, insomnia, friends turned foes, and pressures of fame into his auto-tuned musings on Moviestar. But where have we heard Rema sing about these exact themes before? For this, we look to NOW I KNOW, the outro on his critically-acclaimed, experimental sophomore LP HEIS. On that record, Rema lamented growing up too quickly (“All of my childhood I lost ‘cause I wan feed family”/”Right from my childhood, I steady dey thug with the feelings wey I dey hold”) just as he  does here (“Fans don’t get that I got caught up so young”); his difficulty sleeping and turning to pills (“Sleeping pills no dey work, so I steady overdose”) which appears to still exists (“Insomnia, I can’t sleep without popping/Every night, my mind is racing”); documented trust issues on the chorus (“Na now I know who dey for me/All those I love turned enemies”) that might have worsened (“Friends always make me feel robbed”); and detailed his internal strife (“Inside my heart, so dark but my face e no dey show”) that have since taken up new shapes (“My demons, they fight in the heart/Just like a movie star, Slave to my character”). 

Save for a mini-expose about record deals and being made to write “songs that made the people happy” on Moviestar, both songs could very well be twins, born from an artist still fighting the same battles two years apart,  while also making songs like Kelebu and FUN along the way. It’s the curse of great artists, multidimensionality; a super power that’s also a weakness. His Nigerian and African dance-inclined homebase do not listen to Afro-pop for contemplation. They have day-to-day life for that. Artists respond in kind with music that serves this escapist purpose. But outside of that, and the sociopolitically conscious rhythms often clamoured for, ‘state-of-mind’ sounds do exist. And every once in a while, it’s important that artists extricate their personal conflicts this way. We much prefer this to violent outbursts and assault cases. If anything, it’s to remind the more parasocial fans among the horde that these artists are human beings with issues of their own (Although, it can also be counterproductive for stans obsessed with their off-stage personas). 

Rema isn’t the first artist to sing about the struggles of fame. The broken artist archetype is so popular, in fact, that an entire genre of biopics exploring the lives of said artists, exists in film. Still, there’s an endearing quality to this 25-year-old superstar singing about these struggles without abstraction, and doing so in a way that it’s still enmeshed within the album, MOVIE’s running theme of fame and superstardom. He offers clarity to his person that podcast appearances and fan interactions do not suffice for. 

With Moviestar, you get the perception of an artist asking yet again, “Is anybody even listening?”, an inquiry Rema, and Rema alone, can answer.