REMA : days of Rave & Roses (& of course Bangers)

After releasing a handsome Greatest Hits collection’s worth of banging hits over the past three years, starting with “Dumebi” in early 2019, Benin City Big Boy Rema (he could have stuck with ‘Divine Ikubor’ and it still would have been perfect), has finally dropped his debut album, and it is a treat!

the hits you already know and love:
“Soundgasm”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrTkERuwdCc
“Calm Down”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLsdm1ZYAw

he has helpfully tagged several of the new tracks as “Another Banger!” - earmarked as future singles perhaps? These are: “Time N Affection” (with Chris Brown), “Jo”:
“Mara”, “Are You There?” and “Carry".

This album is amazing from start to finish, but I think my early fav is “Oroma Baby”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD65ycRvD04

“Wine” with Yseult is a wonderful love duet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkLEZOJYzwM

God, the strings on some of these tracks!

good work breastcrawl, I'm only on track 7 and was like "I should start a thread for this as soon as it's over"

the production is consistently astounding! I am mad about the hidden text feature though (song was maybe skippable though?)

other artists would kill for some of the tossed-off melodies on here (the outro on Mara)

ok LONDON is a genius. I was worried about the 1hr length, but now I want this to never end

wow stunning album. immediately up there with African Giant and Made In Lagos for my personal naija canon

hear hear - funny, I thought of ‘canon’ just now as well, but in the context of all those big singles of his. all part of the Afropop canon.

…up to and including the oh so recent “Calm Down”

“Oromo Baby” is some next level shit

yeah I've been excited about Rema since "Dumebi" and the beautiful "Calm Down" was super promising, but I was not remotely expecting something this end-to-end gorgeous

I'll need to listen again to start picking favorites, but I do recall loving Oromo

this isn't a real complaint or anything, but FYN might be one of the weakest tracks? Idk maybe it's just me, but I feel like the UK-rapper-feature hit rate on afrobeats tracks is surprisingly low

I like “FYN”… fyne, and it’s still growing on me considerably every time I hear it, but I don’t really consider it part of his run of perfect singles, I see it as an appetizer for the album. no Another Banger! tag, no glory!

cheers for the rec, very much enjoying this walking about on this beautiful day

Very consistent and competent, exceedingly pleasant, I like all the songs, and a few times in its own dimension. Strikes a good balance between mellow and infectious. Strong Wizkid influence in the music on Hold Me and Dirty. On the other side, synths are a good direction for the genre, I'd like to hear more things in the style of Addicted or Carry. I found that Calm Down was strong as a single. Definitely agree on Oroma Baby :) I really like Jo as well.

fantastic

Don’t sleep on FYN - it sounds designed to open the UK marker big time for him. It’s just another vibe and will probably sound great in the summer. Anyway, this is my favourite album in a while. Such endless hooks and melodies!

market, dyac

There is a rema album and I will definitely listen to it

"carry" is so good

“carry,” “addicted,” “oroma baby,” “runaway” with those strings. really good

this is great stuff. i will be the first to admit i didn't think he had this in him. i slept hard on "soundgasm" last year, sheesh.

i'm surprised you guys are so lukewarm on "FYN"... that's one of my favorites. the string arrangements on there are excellent to me & i like how the album kind of crescendos by working this sort of orchestral afrobeats sound into a radio pop song. i do think he pulls it off, there's some great bits in that song, it doesn't feel perfunctory to me. the funny part to me is when AJ tracey comes in to do his regal rick ross style guest verse except he has a british accent.

this is high praise from me but honestly while listening to this i was thinking that if you imagined a venn diagram where the-dream love vs money overlapped w/ made in algos, this album would be somewhere near the center

made in lagos

made in algos would certainly be a good name for someone's album tho....

"fyn" is as good as anything else here

First impression on first listen: Some excellent mid tempo Afrobeats with a good handful of interesting moments scattered throughout. Chris Brown can fuck off. Nothing on here as fun and thrilling as "Bounce" but I guess that's an outlier

Yep, sounds good on first listen. Not crazy about Rema vocals on "FYN" but like the strings & Brit AJ Tracy guest vocals

fwiw FYN has grown a lot on me. As a single it felt a little undercooked, but within such a lush album I'm finding its airier atmosphere refreshing

I didn't realize on first listen that "Divine" narrates the story of Rema's own birth, which is amazing and makes this the first afropop album to remind me of Tristram Shandy

re: J0rd - that venn diagram is MY venn diagram.

after Jordan had planted that seed I couldn’t help hearing The-Dream in “Addicted”

This albums is tremendous

after Jordan had planted that seed I couldn’t help hearing The-Dream in “Addicted”

― celebrating ten years of constant posting (breastcrawl), Wednesday, March 30, 2022 2:54 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

addicted is the synthwave/afrobeat crossover i didnt know i needed.

That one also makes me think of Rae Sremmurd, somewhat abstractly

yeah for sure in the vocal style

still can't get over little things on this like the transition between the first two tracks

still can't get over little things on this like the transition between the first two tracks

No BNM this time (Apollo) but Pitchfork thinks it's a 7.2
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/rema-rave-and-roses/

So it's at least as good as the new Wet Leg :P

GENRE: Pop/R&B / Global

read all about Rema:

https://afrobeatsintelligence.substack.com/p/rema-batshit-divine

meanwhile, this is Rema’s current top-streaming song on Spotify:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrcWrdRy3uE
Robinson ft. Jason Derulo & Rema • Ayo Girl (Fayahh Beat)

(thought at first Rema got the credit purely for his ‘Another Banger’ tag and it would be just a TikTok-humpin’ Derulo affair)

latest video is for “Are You There”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw9VhFMOIIY

“Oroma Baby” is still my go-to track on this album.

also, “Calm Down” is fast becoming a mainstream pop hit for him in… France.

For those who want a good Rema feature, there is this song from Ladipoe's solid Providence EP (Nov. 2021) and which now has a video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfbufha1oM4

Rema stretching the parameters of what constitutes a feature here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4RRYGI-GdY
Gerilson Insrael ft. Rema • Dance

(Gerilson is Angolan btw)

Mara mind melt:

🦇🌴 https://t.co/C7hkJMROAi

— oxy 🌘🐐 (@oxladeofficial) May 30, 2022

epic moment: just heard “Calm Down” on our office radio, which plays strictly mainstream hits, past and present. the afro takeover is real.

Calm Down and a Good Friday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPgN4EfzUrU

(also something something Bad Liar)

i wish him luck with the crossover success he's angling for but gomez sounds very out of her musical comfort zone here, she's not a good fit at all

agreed, her voice doesn’t match his or the vibe at all.

wish these kinds of tag-on collabs weren’t seen as necessary by the (mostly US, tho there is of course the “Peru” example) industry for crossover Afropop success. “Calm Down” is doing just fine by its damn self in several European countries (#1 in France and Netherlands, top 10 in Belgium and Switzerland)

probably my favourite track on the album. i can live with this as an alternative spin-off and i don't think Selena G ruins it but it's inferior to the original, sure

I don't blame Selena, because the original is perfect and thinking you could this with anyone at all was a mistake (barring Tems or Tiwa etc). Death to this tag-on trend honestly, I'm starting to find it borderline offensive

Taking one of the breeziest, most fun songs of the year and weighing it down like they're heading to a funeral, or a business meeting maybe. Sheesh

yeah, that’s the thing, I don’t even think it will serve its intended purpose (unless you do it really right, again, see Sheeran’s star turn on “Peru”).
the Biebered “Essence” is a bit different too, because the original was already huge in the US r&b market and just needed the tiniest push to fully crossover to the mainstream

today i'm thinking maybe Mara is my favourite song on this

I love the unabashed romanticism of the production on that one

exactly, it's really beautiful, makes me tear up a little

a different kind of banger

ha, I see was sort of wrong upthread about the “Calm Down” missing its commercial mark

anyway, new double A-side from the Boy from Benin City:

“Holiday”, produced by Naijapop’s trusted pair of hands Blaise Beatz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxsK91uBjis

“Reason You”, produced by… Alex Lustig (who I see has credits on Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind and Tinashe’s 333: http://www.youtube.com/watch?=m2j1vXcuazA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2j1vXcuazA

(and the “Calm Down” *remix*… aargh)

I've just blissfully ignored the remix

best practice

gosh these are both really lovely! I'm a bit stunned tbh

video for "Holiday": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LboPHhUyIbo

“Calm Down” climbs to number 8 in the Hot 100 this week, making it the biggest afropop hit in the US so far (“Essence” peaked at #9) - although both Wizkid and Tems have number one credits with their features on “One Dance” and “Wait for U” respectively.

anyone familiar with the US radio situation? which version is getting the most airplay, the original or the Selena one? or is it that r&b stations prefer the original and pop stations the Selena remix?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3FzkxeEACE

Rema guesting with Ice Spice on Saturday Night Live show

just hit play on HEIS and it rules

night and day different vibe from R&R, but that might appeal to some of you (dog latin esp should check this out) -- so far this one is hard, focused (27 mins), fast, metallic instead of lush, romantic, loungey, expansive.

frankly as someone who tired p quickly of the chilled-out naijapiano sound (it's not *entirely* absent here though), I am thrilled by this

emblematic moment: on OZEBA the "another banger" tag is like 5x speed

btw I should make clear that this album is super fun! darker and denser than R&R but stuffed with ear candy

Ooh nice, I'll check

totally missed this post re: "calm down" last year

anyone familiar with the US radio situation? which version is getting the most airplay, the original or the Selena one? or is it that r&b stations prefer the original and pop stations the Selena remix?

the selena one is the only one i heard on top 40 and adult contemporary stations in america. it crossed over to rap/r&b stations eventually, but the one such station in the city i currently live in (for now, moving soon) never ended up adding it. that said, while on vacation elsewhere the big rap/r&b station was playing the original

This is very much my kind of thing

If you'd played me OZEBA, I would never have guessed it was Rema. Is it really him singing/rapping there? Such a different tone. I'm into it

first listen - this is solid and good but nowhere near as pleasing to me as Rave and Roses. no doubt i'll be listening to it a fair bit this month tho. title track is Special

Yeah, I know people loved RnR, but it was a bit mid for me. I think Calm Down grew on me through sheer blunt ubiquity. I just wanna dance haha

This is great! Love how hectic the rhythms are, but I still think it has the lushness of much other afropop. One of the pop-albums of the year.

my mental model of "lush" might be different than yours, but rereading my posts I do think I under-emphasized the luxuriousness and richness of the production. "ear candy" is not the best descriptor, more like idk ear cake or something

it's pretty dense and there are some really pretty melodic bits down in the mix is how i hear it after a couple more listens

really like this. seems like he’s taking cues from future and/or playboi carti’s new bluesman voice when he dips into his lower register. “hehehe” and “ozeba” are just impossibly hard

Yeah it's like a totally different t voice. I don't really understand the words or context of these parts, so part of me wonders if he's doing putting something across when he does this, like it's an impression or something?

The album and his style feel pretty enclosed at this point, but I'm still a fan. Found it solid, short, focused. Among standouts on first listen, I would add Egungun.

I really like the density and aggression; could see myself ultimately preferring this to RnR

I think the whole scene really needed this right now. There's been a bit too much loungey log drums lately.

it's just a lot of fun, and I agree - I can't get enough of logdrums and whatnot but it has become something of a default sound in Afropop/Afrodance-adjacent music. I didn't feel like I was getting much new out of the scene recently. But yeah, this reminds me why I was drawn to this sort of music in the first place

I think there's some beautiful logdrums on this one as well, but yeah, getting away from the loungey vibe is refreshing.

turns out this is a really good album

It is. On one hand it is, yes "bangers", but musically it feels ambitious, progressive even.

Semi-related, but increasingly I've been considering all these epic-length amapiano double albums that producers like Kabza and Kelvin Momo have been releasing over the last couple of years and thinking "man, you could do so much more here".

Like, do I really have a use for 20 x 6-minute tracks that each conform rigidly to the ama formula?

On an individual basis the tracks are good, but even I don't need that. I'd love to see these producers experimenting a bit with the format somehow - going down a more progressive route, or possibly making the album work as a single piece that flows from idea to idea.

I think REIS (in an Afrobeats capacity) is heading towards this - it feels more like a self-contained unit that I can listen to in one sitting rather than a bunch of tracks. And it also represents what originally drew me to the style in the first place as opposed to a lot of Afrobeats I've heard more recently that sounds increasingly like a version of US r'n'b with logdrums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM9YcNns_rc

probably my favourite track, and what a great video

HEIS still sounds breathless and exciting in 2025

Recent singles seem a little more R&B flavored which is also fine by me

"is it a crime" is one of the best songs of the year