Zeyne Releases Powerful Debut Album “AWDA”

 Palestinian-Jordanian artist Zeyne today releases her debut album AWDA, by Scarab Records via MDLBEAST Records, which marks her most personal project yet. Meaning “return” in Arabic, AWDA is an emotionally rich and layered album that unfolds like a book: each track a chapter, each chapter a step deeper into Zeyne’s world; a world where heritage, soul, and contemporary R&B merge with a vibrant palette of Palestinian music and culture to tell a story of identity, longing, and resilience. With over 52 million global streams to date, Zeyne enters this new chapter with an audience that has grown with her.

LISTEN TO “AWDA” HERE

Zeyne invites us into her life across 13 tracks as AWDA explores themes of cultural identity, generational love, mental unravelling, and radical softness. From the opening lines of “7arrir 3aqlak (Asli Ana)”, a reclamation of Palestinian identity through Dabkeh and prose, to the tender, stripped-down lullaby of “Yamma”, written as a prayer for her mother, to the introspective (and perhaps explosive) reflection on mental health in “Yom wara yom (ocd),” a resonating exploration of the repetitive spirals and realities of living with OCD. Each song serves a purpose in the album’s emotional arc. There are no skips and definitely no throwaways. AWDA is designed to be listened to in full, in order, on a loop, and with no clear end – mirroring the cycles we live and return to.

Zeyne disclosed in her interview with Rolling Stone MENA: “I wanted it to feel like one long exhale,” Zeyne says. “It’s a circle. You start in community, you lose yourself, you fall apart — and then you come back home.”

The album’s sonic landscape reflects that same intention with deliberation and emotional attunement. Produced primarily by Nasir Al Bashir, with additional contributions from Khalil Cherradi, Ratchopper, and Sofian Grillo, AWDA is a fusion of dreamy pop, early 2000s R&B, Arabic instrumentation, and ambient soul. The result is a soundscape that shifts between restraint and expansiveness to sonically mimic the emotional whirlwind that inspired it.

Taking the unconventional route, Zeyne chose to single-handedly take charge of the album with only one vocal feature on “6 il Sobh” with Bayou, with the exception of multi-talented Saint Levant coming through with the sax on “Arrib Minni”.  Both features blend seamlessly into the world Zeyne is building with each collaborator bringing out something different in her – to expand the emotional range of the album without taking the focus away. There’s something powerful in how it all fits together as a conversation she’s leading but not having alone.

There’s no posturing, and no pretence either, as the focus remains on transparency and feeling. Across the album, Zeyne balances the personal and the collective, blending emotional specificity with a larger cultural reckoning. Her voice moves between intimacy and invocation, unafraid to hold grief, softness, and resistance in the same breath. AWDA doesn’t follow a linear path but unfolds with intent, shaped by lived experience and musical heritage, drawing from Dabkeh rhythms, fragments of memory, and generational experiences that reverberate beneath each track.

It opens with an assertion,  a reclamation of narrative and identity, most notably in 7arrir 3aqlak (Asli Ana). From the celebration of lineage and self-worth in Hilwa, to the critique of emotional labour in Liya, and the exhaustion of transactional love in Si3r Al 7ob and Bali, the album moves through themes of love, pressure, and survival. only to be contrasted in Jdeed, where Zeyne confronts public scrutiny head-on, declaring her autonomy with clarity. The album reaches its most urgent point in 7ilm/7a2ee2a, calling on herself to wake up and reclaim her agency, before closing with Kollo Lena as a fierce rhythmic celebration of Palestinian joy and resistance.

The result is not a catalogue of songs but rather a tightly knitted narrative, building toward a larger story of return.

With AWDA, Zeyne steps into a space few artists occupy, not just as a singer or songwriter, but as an emerging voice celebrating those who have come before her, deeply rooted yet forward-looking. That intention is felt across AWDA, a body of work that resists the algorithm and chooses narrative and musical honesty over metrics, allowing the album to stand apart in its sonic style, bold storytelling, and thematic clarity. A distinctly original offering that refuses to follow.

It is a love letter to her own becoming, as well as an act of self-return that resonates far beyond the personal. It extends a call to anyone searching for home within themselves. In a world that too often demands silence or assimilation, AWDA proudly speaks and sings on behalf of equinimity.

AWDA is available now on all major streaming platforms via MDLBEAST Records.

Tracklist:

1. 7arrir 3aqlak
2. asli ana
3. hilwa
4. arrib minni
5. 6 il sobh
6. liya
7. jdeed
8. si3ir Al 7ob
9. bali
10. yamma
11. yom wara yom (ocd)
12. 7ilm / 7a2i2a
13. kollo lena