The Rise of Arabizi: The Voice of the Arab Diaspora

When Egyptian artist Bayou joined forces with Gaza-raised musician Saint Levant at Coachella this year, something clicked. Effortlessly switching between Arabic and English, sometimes even within a single bar, Bayou delivered an electrifying performance of his self-branded “Egyptian R&B” track “Haifa Wehbe.” Those few minutes on stage were a powerful reflection of the fluid identity that many third-culture kids now boldly embrace.

Bayou always knew he’d perform at Coachella — he predicted it in his song “Sharqeya Lullabies,” released two years prior. “God always has my back. He is the one who willed it, and inshallah more things will come,” Bayou says, smiling charmingly over our Zoom call from Cairo. And though he might’ve called it years ago, the moment was not just a personal milestone for him, but also a significant cultural event that underscores the emergence of a new musical genre brought to a major stage.

This rising genre, most often referred to as Arabizi or A-pop, among other names, describes the popular music emerging from the Arab diaspora. Though it still lacks a singular mainstream name, the genre seamlessly bridges East and West, featuring an eclectic mix of languages, styles, and sounds that reflect the hyphenated identities of the Arab diaspora and a generation of artists and fans who are unapologetically proud of their Arab heritage. Its leading lights include Saint Levant and Bayou (who share a management company, Abu Recordings), along with Palestinian-Chilean artist Elyanna, who made Coachella history in 2023 by performing an entire set in Arabic, and other talents such as Lana Lubany, Felukah, Zeyne, Nadine El Roubi, and more.

“The term is still not finalized… the genre is still being cooked,” says Suhel Nafar, the vice president at EMPIRE WANA, an independent label division dedicated to developing and promoting music from the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region. “The baby just started crawling this year, I would say.”

For third-culture kids, this music evokes a sense of home that lies between their roots and their current residences. Bayou and Saint Levant’s soul-searching track “Here and There” encapsulates this, featuring an airplane’s takeoff as the outro: “Third-culture kid, the world and God gave me options/One way flight, I’m taking the nonstop trip/Which city do I wanna go and get lost in?” 

Growing up, Bayou didn’t feel there was an artist who fully represented him. This made it challenging for him and many like him to find their place in the musical landscape. He reflects on the polarized choices of the past: “It is not just Chris Brown or Amr Diab anymore — we now have our own lane,” he says. Now the cultural tide is shifting, with artists emerging who bridge the gap between Eastern and Western influences, offering representation that resonates with those from both worlds.

TikTok and Instagram have played a significant role in turbocharging this movement. As Nafar puts it, “If you look at TikTok, dabke and maqloube are two big trends. User-generated content has helped export our culture, and that has helped musicians export their music. The diaspora has been doing a great job of being the bridge, bringing global to local, creating this ‘glocal’ feeling.”

Nafar also acknowledges platforms like MENA Heat, the Instagram page where he discovered 15-year-old Gazan hip-hop legend MC Abdul and Palestinian-Jordanian artist Issam Alnajjar. “The memes are the third-culture page, I would say. They are the Arabizi Hub.”

Bayou feels that Arabizi music “is giving people back home someone to look up to.” “Rather than looking up to the Weeknd, which was what I had to look up to, or PartyNextDoor, they can look up to Saint Levant or Elyanna or Zeyne or Bayou from the start, which is cool and definitely something I’m really proud to be part of.”

Growing up in the cosmopolitan city of Dubai, Bayou naturally blended English and Arabic, a fusion that now defines his music. “This genre is really me because the city I grew up in, English and Arabic were thrown together all the time,” he says. “It’s just the way that we would speak and it feels quite natural.” His music embodies this duality, resonating with many who share his background.

Bayou’s mantra, “NEVER AT HOME,” encapsulates his third-culture experience: “I am an Egyptian who never lived in Egypt — that’s why I am NEVER AT HOME,” he says. “NEVER AT HOME for me is both being an Egyptian away from home and repping the culture away, and back home being an absolute alien. It’s both sides. Being an alien away from home and being an alien when you are home.” His sentiment, “I belong to the world,” sums it up: home is everywhere and nowhere all at once. This perspective is at the heart of the Arabizi movement, driving a new cultural wave.

Saint Levant’s work echoes similar themes. His single “5am in Paris” reflects his complex relationship with home, referencing Gaza, Algieria, Paris, and Los Angeles. The track submerges us into his feelings of profound alienation and perpetual displacement. “It’s about exile,” Saint Levant said onstage at Coachella. “A feeling that us Palestinians know a bit too well.” 

Although this genre has been around for a while, it is just recently gaining traction and acclaim. “Unfortunately one of the reasons, I would say, that [Arabizi] is even bigger this year is because of our political climate,” Nafar observes. “Arabs are moving all around the world because we are forced out of our hometowns, and that is creating new spices in the Western kitchen which is creating these third-culture kids.” 

This cultural blend has created a new sound, merging Western genres with traditional Arabic instruments such as the nay, tabla, and oud, and distinct Arabic drum patterns and Arabic scales. It showcases a remarkable diversity in language-mixing, too. Artists like Zeyne sing primarily in Arabic, but in styles more typically heard in English. Egyptian neo-soul sensation Felukah seamlessly alternates between languages, even within a single sentence, reflecting a fluid bilingual artistry. Meanwhile, other artists like Saudi popstar Mishaal Tamer sing predominantly in English, incorporating a few Arabic words here and there, adding a unique cultural texture to their music.

“This new generation is mixing their music, seeing this movement of hybrid languages,” Nafar tells me. “It’s the internet kids.” Indeed, Arab music has always embraced different hybrids of instruments and styles. Fairouz, often hailed as the voice of Lebanon and an icon of Arab music, incorporated jazz into her music in the Fifties and Sixties; the Seventies Lebanese band the Bendaly Family created an early Arabizi classic with the viral “Do You Love Me,” and the satirical 2008 hit “Lahme Song” by Thanks Joey, the Lahme Bros, and frasmo also contributed to this cross-cultural hybridization that is the foundation of Arabizi. 

This blending of influences paved the way for the Arab hip-hop movement, which, rooted in decades of social and political struggles, gained significant traction in the 2000s. Artists from Palestine to Lebanon used hip-hop as a form of resistance and expression, crafting a genre that would later influence Arabizi. DAM — a Palestinian hip-hop group that included Nafar, the future EMPIRE executive — were among the first to rap in Arabic, releasing their groundbreaking album Dedication in 2006. In 2007, Palestinian-Canadian artist Belly released his debut album, The Revolution, while based in Canada, an early example of Arabizi. This innovative groundwork laid the foundation for Arabizi OGs like Syrian-American rapper Omar Offendum and Iraqi-Canadian rapper Narcy, who have put the fusion of Arabic, English, and hip-hop elements at the forefront of their artistry.

During the early 2000s, Arab samples also found their way into several notable Western hits such as Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’,” featuring a beat by Timbaland that sampled legendary Egyptian singer and actor Abdel Halim Hafez’s “Khosara Khosara.” Timbaland also produced Aaliyah’s “Don’t Know What to Tell Ya,” which sampled Algerian icon Warda’s “Batwanes Beek.” While Arab music was incorporated into these tracks, it went unrecognized because the samples were uncredited and arguably stolen, with no recognition or compensation for the original Arab artists. 

“This trend didn’t just come out of nowhere; it has been over 20 years, even from the 1960s,” says Bahraini DJ and radio host Nooriyah. “This moment was being built to come, and I appreciate all the artists that have come before us to make space in the way that my peers and I have now. For the longest time, our music has been influencing a lot of music in the West in so many insidious ways. It is really nice now that this is coming to the forefront and has a face and a name.”

The rise of SWANA parties has also played a crucial role in this cultural movement. These events happening all over the diaspora — from Nooriyah’s Middle of Nowhere in London to DJ Habibi Beats’ Habibi House in L.A. and Laylit in New York — celebrate Middle Eastern and North African music, dance, and fashion, creating spaces where young diaspora members can connect with their heritage and introduce it to wider audiences. These gatherings have been incubators for new talent and have helped solidify the presence of Arabizi in the music scene.

“In London eight years ago, there was virtually no party at all that mixed Arabic music as part of the tapestry,” Nooriyah recalls. “A lot of parties you would hear everything under the sun, but you would never hear Arabic music, so I just wanted to change that.” 

These parties do more than entertain; they push the boundaries of sound and bring different communities together. “Before Arabic music operated in such a silo, especially in the 2000s,” Nooriyah adds. “That didn’t push forward the discussion or the narrative whatsoever. These parties that allow people to play whatever they want and mash in their identity are so important to moving the narrative forward.” 

These parties also function as vessels of resistance. At Nooriyah’s London headline set for her Middle of Everywhere tour in October, she passionately declared on the dance floor: “We in the diaspora have a duty to inform. We have a duty to say ‘end the occupation.’ We have a duty to say ‘end apartheid.’ We have a duty to say ‘end colonization.’ By coming here today, you are standing tall in cultures that are being erased, because since when is hummus not ours? Since when are our embroideries not ours? Since when are our sounds not ours?” The crowd responded with a unified chant of “Free, Free, Palestine!”

Arabizi continues to bridge the East and West, often through reinterpretations and mashups of Arabic and English classics. Elyanna’s “Callin’ You,” a blend of Outlandish’s “Callin U” and Amr Diab’s “Tamally Maak,” and Palestinian DJ Jameel’s Sherine x Drake mash-up, which propelled Sherine to global charts, are prime examples of this fusion.

“Right now we are at the cusp of a new age… I want to be at the forefront… I believe many talents will be pushing this genre forward in the West and back home,” Bayou says with quiet confidence. 

Arab producers like Hady Moamer (also known as Jean Bleu), too, are now boldly embracing their culture and language in their work. Moamer, who produced a track on Drake’s 2021 album Certified Lover Boy, released his own debut album, Darbet Bar2, entirely in Arabic.

Today’s generation has a distinct approach when it comes to presenting their identity to the world. Nafar explains: “Our grandparents’ generation was just struggling to survive and get their lives stable because of the political climate in the region. Our parents were this generation of ‘just stay quiet, don’t say that you are Arab, change your name’ so you are successful in business — if you are Mohammed, you are Mo. All of these things were to protect us, to keep us in that safe doctor, lawyer bubble.” He emphasizes the shift in attitude among young Arabs today: “We are not currently in a generation of ‘let me break stereotypes.’ We are in a generation of I don’t fucking care if you like me. This is us. Fuck you. Join us, enjoy our food and music or don’t, we don’t care… That whole let me explain or let me humanize myself is almost slowing us down from taking over.”

As the Arab music scene gains global traction, it faces the risk of cultural exploitation. Nafar stresses the importance of authenticity and representation: “The diaspora has to stay authentic and connected to the local and be the bridge but not have a colonialist mentality, using home without representing it in the right way and without bringing back home whenever you win. You can love the culture, use the culture, but remember there are people behind it.” His warning highlights the danger of appropriating cultural sounds without genuine respect, diluting their meaning and disrespecting their origins. Artists must honor their roots, ensuring their fame brings visibility and respect to the cultures they represent, rather than reducing them to mere aesthetic choices.

Drawing parallels with other global cultural movements, Nafar observes, “If you look at all these cultures — K-pop, reggaeton, Afrobeats — you see similar patterns. It’s not the same speed, but it is the same growth pattern. We are having the same style of movement.” 

Ultimately, he says, “This new generation is at a point where they don’t care about your stereotypes. We are going to do our thing, take over, and if you want to join us, you’re welcome. If not, we don’t need you.”