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K-Pop star AleXa and Radar Middle East and North Africa’s (MENA) Kuwaiti-Saudi-based creator Bader AlShuaibi’s collaborated on a new single ‘Is It On.’
Sung in Korean, English and Arabic, the K-pop-style track features a reggaeton rhythm and a catchy lead sound.
“Music is music, so the same passion was injected into this project, but the new element I felt during this song was that the tempo of the music was different than what we are used to in the MENA area. It was a fun, new, awesome experience,” AlShuaibi said in a statement.
‘Is It On’ is seemingly the region’s first cross-cultural collaboration between K-pop and Khaleeji pop.
“Every element in the track is so distinctive and culturally outstanding on its own, yet they are all beautifully intertwined with each other,” AleXa said in a statement on the trilingual track. “It’s a harmony of different cultures.” She became Spotify’s first Radar Korea artist in August 2020.
The virtual collaboration comes at a time when K-Pop is continuing to grow within the region. The genre saw a 140% increase in Spotify streaming from users in the MENA region, from January 2020 to January 202. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Morocco, Egypt, and Qatar are the top five MENA countries streaming K-pop.
B.I.G — an acronym Boys in Groove — is one K-Pop band making noticeable efforts to communicate to Arabic-speaking fans. They gained attention for singing and uploading covers of Arabic songs for their ‘Global Cover Project’. Just before holding a mini-concert in Abu Dhabi as part of the ‘Korea Festival 2019’, the quintet dropped Arabic song ‘Illusion’ with a K-Pop twist, making them the first Korean pop act to take this initiative.