Rema’s Next Era is Probably Not What You Expected

Many of us were first introduced to Rema through his early freestyle videos. Remember those videos? When he was lithe and wide-eyed. When he hadn’t yet taken on the imperious charisma that has become synonymous with him. When his voice hadn’t assumed the dark mildewed texture with which he conjures foreboding melodies today. In the video for a freestyle entitled Spiderman, one of his most memorable, he’s nestled in a vehicle, wearing a purple windbreaker, arms folded taut across his chest. As he bobs his head to the glistening production, his locs and earrings oscillating in perfect synchrony, you can almost taste the frisson humming beneath his skin, bursting from his mouth like an angry waterfall as he overlays the crisp Trap production with sleek melodic rapping. Here was a star in the making; a gem uncut, unpolished, not yet bristling with the dazzling beauty, that transcendence, that’s characteristic of polished gems. 

Today, he’s a different person, in the literal sense. Hercules, after his ascension, was elevated to divine status. As a critic and journalist, I have developed a certain distaste for undeserved veneration or exaggeration. Remaining faithful to the journalistic code of objectivity, or at least striving for it, has the unintended consequence of imbuing one with a certain kind of snobbery. A good kind, albeit. Perhaps journalistic integrity or dignity is the appropriate characterization. It’s this dignity that keeps one from swaying to the wind of public opinion; serving as a defense against superfluous commentary and biased reporting. But as I stood before Rema last year at his listening party for his album Heis, this wall of tasteful snobbery, if coolness, came crashing down, flooding my heart with the same reverential awe I imagine moved audiences at the concerts of stalwarts like James Brown and Michael Jackson. 

Rema had just achieved the milestones of the biggest African song and album and was bristling with valiant confidence. His career since that momentous night has been similarly speckled with an array of milestones. But for all his dazzling strides, he appears to have put his first love—Trap music—on the back burner. In his telling, his last album Heis was in some sense a play at bringing the ominous atmosphere of Rage Hip Hop (the kind of music made by artists like Playboi Carti and Ken Carson) into Afrobeats. And his experiment was wildly successful. He earned a Grammy nomination for the album and, more importantly, stirred a movement that fanned across the country and continues to be felt to this day. But inflecting Afrobeats with a tinge of Hip Hop is significantly different from making a Trap or a Rap album. And years after making the pivot to Afrobeats, somewhere in his heart still calls out to his roots in Trap. There’s, however, a possibility that he might be priming himself for a return to Trap.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Over the years, he’s made a habit of occasionally releasing Trap snippets on social media, most of which never see the light of day. But recently, he looks to be bracing himself for a lurch back to his Trap roots. In recent months, he’s been seen in the company of several rappers, including Ken Carson. This is hardly compelling evidence. Afrobeats artists routinely roll with rappers. This, however, adds up to the larger picture. And last week, the entire picture started to come into sharper focus. In quick-fire succession—mere days separating them—he released three Trap snippets (each one a few seconds shy of two minutes). The reactions ranged from feverish excitement to concern over his apparent change of tack. One thing is clear, however: Trap Rema has the audience listening, curious about whatever he has in store. 

Foreign Hip Hop publications and blogs like Kurrco and Complex Music have carried these snippets . This is a clear indicator that Rema is gauging the public’s reaction. And while a handful of comments are somewhat censuring, deriding him for stealing Playboi Carti’s flow or branching out from Afrobeats, public opinion is mostly positive. The snippets are genuinely impressive, more refined than his early Trap freestyles, and good enough to hold their own in foreign markets. 

The story, however, gets slightly confounding. Just when the anticipation had built to a fever pitch, with many declaring a Trap EP/album inevitable, Rema subverted expectations by releasing a mellow Afropop snippet on Thursday. Unlike the Trap snippets he released earlier, this one feels similar in spirit to his only single this year Is It a Crime, a slow-burn Afropop song that samples Sade Adu. As expected, this has left speculators feeling like they had embarked on a wild goose chase. Is Trap Rema making a return or will we get the more plausible scenario: Rema settling back into the familiar terrain of Afropop? Some more creative speculators have posited that the competing narratives in this new juncture for Rema are a result of internal discord between the artist and the label: Rema wants to satiate his desire for Trap, while his label wants the less risky approach. And so, leaking Trap records is Rema’s way of trying to convince his label that perhaps a Trap project is not the risky bet they think it is. While this all makes for interesting content, what’s likely is that those rumors are simply just rumors. What’s however certain is that whatever direction the 25-year-old decides to head in will ineluctably leave some fans taken aback.