DUBAI: It seems that Canadian rapper Drake has added Arabic to his ever-growing linguistic repertoire.
After joining forces with DJ Khaled this week on a pair of new songs, one in which he raps in French, the “Hotline Bling” hitmaker has just released a new song with British rapper Headie One. The drill song, titled “Only You Freestyle,” dropped on Monday alongside an accompanying visual.
In the new track, Drake raps a couple of his lines in Arabic, that allude to his Middle Eastern features.
“Arabic ting tells me I look like Youssef, look like Hamza/ Habibti please, ana akeed, inti wa ana ahla” he raps in the new song.
The Grammy award-winning artist has previously recognized his Arab features in a 2015 Instagram post from his visit to Dubai, where he admitted to looking like Sheikh Mansoor Bin Mohammed Al-Maktoum, jokingly stating that he was his “long lost brother.”
Meanwhile, “ana akeed, inti wa ana ahla” translates to “I’m certain you and I look better together.”
Arab social media users picked up on his use of the Arabic language and some took to Twitter to celebrate while others teased his pronunciation.
“I just know that DJ Khaled was the one that taught Drake Arabic,” wrote one user alongside a crying emoji.
“Drake adding Arabic to his accent collection,” joked another user alongside a GIF of Thanos acquiring his final Infinity Stone.
“Everybody is bashing Drake for not speaking proper Arabic... (to be honest) he did better than some arabs I (know),” another user wrote defending the star.
Meanwhile, some got down to celebrating Drake’s use of the words.
American-Iraqi YouTube star FaZeRug wrote: “Drake speaking Arabic in his latest freestyle tho.”
Another user shared a video of Arab men dancing and joked: “Me listening to Drake’s Arabic verse…”
which one of y’all keep teaching drake Arabic??? I just wanna talk pic.twitter.com/HMo7hrCS1i
— ChampagneJuJu (@jhabashy15) July 20, 2020
Another Twitter user wanted to know, “Which one of y’all keep teaching drake Arabic???”
Indeed, it’s not the first time that the hitmaker has used Arabic phrases in his music.
Fans will remember when the 33-year-old rapped “This is a blessing mashallah wallahi,” in the remix of “Sweeterman,” a song originally produced by Canadian-Egyptian Ramriddlz.
Drake previously used Arabic terms on his 2017 song “Portland” where he says “Habibi” and on the 2018 song “Diplomatic Immunity” where he says “InshAllah.”
