Drake’s ‘Habibti’ Moment Sparked a Familiar Arab Internet Cycle

When Drake surprise-dropped a 43-track trilogy – one of them titled Habibti – last week, the Middle Eastern internet ballooned with think pieces dissecting his use of Arabic references. He mentions halal, deen, Ramadan and mashallah. He sampled Fairuz and called out DJ Khaled for staying silent on Gaza. Drake isn’t the only Western artist leaning into the Arab world. Billie Eilish has publicly praised Lebanese icon Nancy Ajram, calling Arabic music “melted chocolate in my ears.” In May 2024, Macklemore released a protest track, “Hind’s Hall”, after a six-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by the Israeli military, and donated all proceeds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency as explicit political advocacy. Drake’s approach is neither, but something more ambiguous that’s part of his sound and personal circles. The question is: what’s driving it, and whether Arab audiences should be celebrating. The reaction says as much about the Arab internet as it does about Drake. As Arabic music, aesthetics and online culture become more globally visible through streaming and social media, Western artists are increasingly folding Arabic references into their work. But each moment tends to trigger the same debate online: is this meaningful cultural visibility, algorithmic trend-chasing or simply another version of the West discovering Arab culture once it becomes commercially valuable? Arabic phrases, Fairuz samples and “habibi” captions now travel easily across TikTok feeds and streaming platforms far beyond the region itself. What once felt niche or regional increasingly functions as global internet culture. A Brief History of Arabic in Hip-Hop Islamic- and Arabic-adjacent language has circulated in hip-hop for decades , largely through the influence of the Five Percent Nation – an offshoot of the Nation of Islam founded in Harlem in the 1960s. During hip-hop’s golden age in the ’80s and ’90s, artists affiliated with the movement, such as Rakim, Wu-Tang Clan, Nas and Big Daddy Kane, wove Islamic terminology to express their identity. In the last 20 years, artists like Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean and many others have used Islamic-adjacent lyrics. Lil Wayne said “As-salamu alaykum” in the 2013 track “Tapout”, Big Sean said “alhamdulillah” on his 2019 track “ Bezerk ” with A$AP Ferg, who also used it on “ Plain Jane ” two years earlier. In a Genius video , Ferg explained, “I’m not Muslim, my grandfather was Muslim.” Danny Hajjar, a Lebanese American music writer and former head of Rolling Stone Middle East , shares that the shift is related to visibility. “We’ve seen artists like Sting and Don Omar collaborate with Arab artists, or producers like Timbaland sample Arabic songs in production,” he says. “In the UK and France especially, many artists utilised Arabic words in their music for decades because of the prevalent diaspora communities.” Why It Feels Like It’s Suddenly Booming The perception of Western artists suddenly embracing Arabic culture has a commercial backbone, even if it isn’t as new as it appears. According to the IFPI’s 2025 Global Music Report , the MENA region was the fastest-growing music market in the world in 2024, with streaming revenue up 22.8%. Arabic was one of the fastest-growing languages on Spotify that year. Since the platform launched in the region in 2018, streams of MENA artists outside their home countries have grown at nearly 40% annually . With over 400 million Arabic speakers globally and a young, digitally connected median demographic, it’s an audience that Western artists and labels can no longer afford to overlook. Latin music’s crossover in the late 2010s followed a similar trajectory, with streaming revenue in the US growing in 2017, and Spanish-language tracks on the Hot 100 jumping from three in 2015 to 19 that year. As audiences grow, so does the creative exchange, and Arabic music may be at a similar inflection point. As for proximity, Noah “40” Shebib, Drake’s longtime collaborator and co-architect of the OVO Sound , is of Lebanese descent and is among the producers credited across the Habibti trilogy. Representation or Opportunism Zeina Issa, a 26-year-old designer and longtime Drake fan, sees his references emerging from the genuine proximity. “I don’t think he’s specifically speaking to an Arab fan,” she says. “He’s surrounded by a lot of Arabic culture that it’s now sort of embedded in his vocabulary. It doesn’t feel forced.” She adds that while political engagement matters – referring to Drake’s early ceasefire letter signing for Palestine – that “there are multiple ways of engaging with politics rather than just sharing stuff on social media.” Sumayya Tobah, a journalist and former fan who posted a critical video response to the trilogy, thinks differently. “The ‘bling-ification’ of our cultures has been going on for years,” she says, and argues that hip-hop has always been a vehicle for questioning authority and discussing oppression – subjects Arabs can deeply relate to, especially now. “Drake had the opportunity to say something real to his Arab audiences across all three of these albums, and he squandered that opportunity.” Canadian Iraqi rapper and multimedia artist Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman, who recently interviewed Shebib for Rolling Stone Middle East , responded publicly to Tobah’s video, arguing that Drake’s calling out of DJ Khaled’s silence on Palestine was itself a meaningful act. “Why do we feel the need to think celebrity is going to pivot any political injustice in our world?” he wrote. Hajjar makes a point focused less on Western artists’ sincerity than on how Arab media covers these moments. “The minute any Western artist says anything in Arabic, the coverage skews toward an overly zealous tone that makes it seem like these are groundbreaking moments,” he says. Yet, those same outlets will mock Western artists for unfamiliarity with Arab traditions. Tobah echoes this frustration, saying we “don’t need to celebrate any time a Western artist ‘sees’ us,” adding that “Western artists want to use Arabic language in their music, but never want to speak up against anti-Arab or anti-Muslim sentiments.” Perhaps the question isn’t what Drake – or any other artist – wants from Arabic culture, but what Arab audiences want from these encounters.