During his performance at the 2024 Dreamville Festival in North Carolina, Nigerian singer Divine Ikubor, popularly known as Rema, walked off the stage midway into his set due to sound issues.
Rema was performing his hit song ‘Calm Down’ on Day 2 of the festival at Dix Park in Raleigh when he stopped midway to express frustration about the poor sound quality before ultimately leaving the stage.
The singer voiced his concerns about the sound issues, advocating for equal sound quality for African artists compared to their Western counterparts on international stages.
He remarked, “Hold on, there are too many sound issues. It’s messing up my whole performance. I’m seriously not feeling this sh*t. I’m representing Africa, this is too messed up. If the sound cannot be perfect for every artist that gets on this stage… Africa is in the house and you are messing sh*t up?”
The Dreamville Festival, founded by American hip-hop superstar J. Cole, is a highly anticipated event in the music industry.
Rema’s recent EP, Ravage, demonstrated his international success by debuting on charts in over 50 countries shortly after its release on Friday, October 26, 2023.
This incident follows Rema’s historic win as the first African artist to receive a Chinese Music Award for the Best Collaboration of the Year at the 2024 Hito Music Award in the Republic of China for his song ‘Calm Down’ remix with American superstar Selena Gomez.
Since joining D’Prince’s Jonzing World in 2019, Rema has garnered immense popularity and critical acclaim, with hit singles like ‘Calm Down’ amassing significant streaming numbers, breaking records, and earning awards.
In recognition of his success, Rema was listed as one of the top-exported artists in sub-Saharan Africa on Spotify’s 2023 charts, and he made history alongside Burna Boy at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards as the first winners of the newly created Afrobeats Awards.
