For the second consecutive year, Divine Ikubor, popularly known as Rema, has emerged as Entertainer of the Year, following a run of achievements that underlined his status as a leading face of Afrobeats. The 25 year old continued to dominate charts, award shows and global conversations throughout 2025.
Rema’s sophomore album HEIS remained a major talking point, attracting critical praise and international accolades. Music legend Angelique Kidjo described him as an embodiment of Afrobeats’ worldwide success and a key reason African music now sits at the forefront of global culture.
His 2023 smash hit Calm Down, from the 2022 album Raves and Roses, maintained impressive momentum in 2025. The track has joined the “billion streams” club twice over, reinforcing its status as one of the most successful Afrobeats songs of all time.
Rema opened the year by winning Album of the Year for HEIS and Best Male Artist at the 2025 Trace Awards in February. In April, at the 17th Headies, he added two more honours Afrobeats Album of the Year for HEIS and Producer of the Year for his song Ozeba.
In 2025 he also scored another major hit with the single Baby. The song finished the year as the most exported Nigerian track of 2025, highlighting both the range of Nigerian music and Rema’s growing influence with audiences around the world.
By September, Rema’s profile was further elevated when he was listed on the 2025 TIME100 Next list as one of the world’s most influential rising stars. He was the only Nigerian artist on a list that also featured football prodigy Lamine Yamal and other emerging figures in music, film, sports, politics, science and philanthropy.
Streaming data underscored his impact. In 2025 alone, his songs generated around 3.7 million streams per day on Spotify, pushing his annual total for the platform above 800 million streams. Research cited in the report shows that by late 2025, Rema had crossed 12 billion total career streams globally and about 5.5 billion total streams on Spotify.
On Spotify, he holds roughly 5.45 billion cumulative streams across all tracks, with around 4.24 billion streams as lead artist on 71 songs and approximately 1.21 billion streams from 55 tracks where he appears as a featured act. These figures place him among the most streamed African artists of his generation.
Rema also made headlines with his lifestyle choices, splashing an estimated N1 billion on luxury cars in 2025. He reportedly acquired a Mercedes Benz G63 valued at about N600 million and a Lamborghini Urus estimated at N400 million.
The Benin born star first broke out in 2019 with his hit single Dumebi, released under D’Prince’s Jonzing World, an imprint under Don Jazzy’s Mavin Records. His debut self titled EP Rema topped Apple Music’s Nigerian charts, while the Dumebi video has amassed over 81 million views on YouTube.
Taken together, his musical output, awards, global reach and cultural influence in 2025 have reinforced Rema’s position as a leading figure in Afrobeats and justified his recognition as Entertainer of the Year.
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