Don Jazzy just pulled back the curtain, and the numbers are staggering.
In a fresh episode of the Bounce podcast with Toolz that dropped today, the Mavin Records boss calmly admitted he pumped close to $5 million into turning Rema’s “Calm Down” into the biggest African song of all time.
Not on the beat. Not on the video. On everything: lifestyle, tours, international collabs, radio pushes, and the Selena Gomez remix that sent the track to No. 3 on Billboard.
“That song cost us $4 million to $5 million to get to where it is,” Don Jazzy said, almost casually, before adding, “the lifestyle cost alone…”
Fans are shook. Some are praising the vision, others are whispering that not every artist on the label gets that kind of chequebook love.
But the gamble paid off in diamonds, literally. “Calm Down” is now 7× platinum in America, the first African-led song to cross a billion U.S. streams, and still the most streamed African track ever on Spotify with over 2 billion global plays.
Six years after signing a teenage Rema off an Instagram freestyle, Don Jazzy’s expensive bet has rewritten history.
And while the streets argue about favoritism inside Mavin, one thing is clear: when it comes to breaking Afrobeats globally, money talks and Don Jazzy just showed the receipt.
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