Drake has sparked debate after previewing a new track from his upcoming album Iceman that samples Fairuz’s iconic 1979 song Wahdon.
We haven’t heard much from BBL Drizzy since his messy feud with Kendrick Lamar, but Drake is back doing what he does best – teasing.
The Canadian rapper has been live-streaming episodes of Iceman, his ninth studio album, and one snippet in particular got Arab fans double-taking – Drake has sampled Fairuz. Yes, that Fairuz.
According to Mille World, one of the previews featured a track built around Wahdon, the 1979 classic written by poet Talal Haidar and composed by Ziad Rahbani.
The original song is drenched in grief, inspired by Haidar’s memory of three young men who used to greet him every day on their way into the forest, until one morning they never returned. They were later revealed to be resistance fighters who died in battle. Out of this story came Wahdon, a meditation on sudden loss, ordinary courage, and the void left behind.
Drake, meanwhile, has taken those vocals and flipped them into a moody lo-fi cut with stuttering drums and glittery hi-hats, classic 2025 Drizzy production. His Lebanese-Canadian right-hand man, Noah “40” Shebib, co-founder of OVO Sound, is likely behind the decision.
The question is less can Drake sample Fairuz, and more should he? Because Fairuz isn’t just another sample pack. She’s Lebanon’s voice of morning, of wartime longing, of entire generations. Using her vocals carries cultural weight.
Lebanese audiences are fiercely protective of her legacy, and not every Western artist has treated it with care.
Take Madonna, who in the early ’90s sampled Fairuz’s hymn El Yaoum ’Ouloulak for her album Erotica. The collision of sacred hymn and overtly sexual pop was so scandalous it provoked a lawsuit, denunciations from religious leaders, and a debate about whether the West simply plunders Arab music without understanding it.
Other cases have been more thoughtful. Independent artist Macklemore sampled Fairuz’s Ana La Habibi last year for his pro-Palestine anthem Hind’s Hall, named after six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed in Gaza in 2024 after Israeli forces attacked her family’s car and the ambulance sent to save her. The sample wasn’t aesthetic wallpaper as it anchored a political tribute, connecting Fairuz’s voice of loss with contemporary tragedy.
So where does Drake land? Somewhere in between. His remix feels more like a stylistic nod than a scandal, but the stakes remain. Will Fairuz be credited? Will the cultural context of Wahdon, born of martyrdom and memory, be acknowledged? Or will it become just another vibe layered under moody hi-hats for the algorithm?
This isn’t Drake’s first brush with Middle Eastern sounds. His lyrics have occasionally featured Arabic phrases and references (such as “habibi” and “insha’Allah”), most notably on Only You Freestyle with Headie One in 2020, where he slipped into Arabic verse.
Arab icons have been surfacing in Western hip-hop more frequently, with Clipse recently sampling Saudi legend Talal Al Maddah on So Be It. But Drake operates on another scale entirely, with album drops that ripple across the globe.
And Iceman is already heating up. The third episode of his livestreamed rollout gave fans previews of Somebody Loves Me Pt. 2 with Cash Cobain, a Yeat collab featuring Julia Wolf, and glimpses into his ongoing spat with Kendrick Lamar.
For context, this will be Drake’s first proper solo album since For All the Dogs (2023), though he’s stayed busy with the 100 GIGS EP (2024) and collabs with Central Cee and Yeat.
No release date is locked yet, just a vague 2025 window, but snippets alone have already stirred debates across timelines from Toronto to Beirut.
