Do Arabs Need to Start Gatekeeping Our Culture?

The habibi-fication of pop culture is well and truly amongst us. Drake recently dropped multiple albums, one titled Habibti, featuring a woman on the cover almost entirely covered, only her heavily lined eyes visible in a very stereotypical rendering of "Arabness." Across the album he references the Middle East repeatedly: "Iraq up a tab in Chanel 'cause I Dubai everything like I'm Middle Eastern" and "All these Arab women treat me like I'm the Prince of Persia."

At first glance, this kind of visibility can feel exciting. Arabs are so often erased from mainstream culture that any reference can feel like representation. But when does the line begin to blur between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation?

This isn't the first time "habibi-fication" has hit the Western music industry. In the early 2000s, Timbaland sampled multiple Arabic songs in tracks like Aaliyah's More Than a Woman, which sampled Mayada El Hennawy's Alouli Ansa, and Jay-Z's Big Pimpin', which sampled Abdel Halim Hafez's Khosara Khosara. While the samples were cleared, the gap between what was made commercially and what Arab artists received raises questions in itself.

Other artists have allegedly used Arabic music without proper clearance altogether. Madonna was once sued for $2 million by Fairuz over an attempted sample, whilst producer Barry Can't Swim has faced speculation around the use of Ouda by Hamid El Shaeri in El Layali, a track that has since disappeared from streaming platforms.

Whenever Arab culture enters mainstream pop discourse, the question becomes: who profits from our art, and what version of "Arabness" is being sold back to the world? The image of the rich gulf "habibi" Arab endlessly spending and indulging is flattening at best and dangerous at worst. And should artists really be able to borrow from Arab aesthetics, language and music whilst remaining completely silent on the actual political realities Arabs are facing? So genuinely, do Arabs need to start gatekeeping our culture a little more?

Words by @smizzowrites