Zeina
A Rising Voice Bridging Cultures Through Music
By Afef Yousfi
Zeina, often stylized simply as, is an emerging figure in the contemporary R&B and pop space who bridges multiple cultural worlds. Her music fuses Western and Middle Eastern influences, she sings across languages, and she embodies a generation of artists who draw from diasporic identities while carving space in mainstream scenes. Though still under the radar outside certain music circles, Zeina’s trajectory suggests she is on the cusp of wider recognition.
Her Instagram handle @zeina, linked to “mateswav” in her branding, provides a window into her creative world and aesthetic presence.
One of the compelling aspects of Zeina is the multiplicity of her identity. She is a Canadian singer from Montreal, Quebec, of Lebanese and Egyptian descent. Her multilingualism, singing in English, French, and Arabic, reflects both her personal background and her ambition to speak across linguistic borders. Her childhood included stints in Saudi Arabia, which exposed her early to Arab culture, and later moving to the West, where the experience of cultural otherness shaped how she perceived herself and her art.
She has described wanting at times to mute what made her different in order to fit in, but eventually reclaiming and embracing her Arab identity as essential to her artistic voice. This tension between assimilation and self-assertion runs through much of Zeina’s work. To her, identity is not a static thing but a dynamic tension to be explored in sound, language, and collaboration.
Zeina’s early musical experiments date back to the mid-2010s. Her first phases leaned toward more conventional R&B and pop stylings, but over time she cultivated a more distinctive blend, drawing on late 90s and early 2000s R&B as a foundation while weaving in hip hop, pop, and Arabic instrumentation or vocal references. In 2024, she released her debut studio album Eastend Confessions, marking a milestone in her career.
Before that, she had put out an EP Odd One Out in 2021. Her discography includes singles such as Hooked, which became her first to chart on the Canadian Hot 100, peaking at number 77. Among her notable tracks are Give Me Time, Nasty, Ur Loss, Allo Min, Times Two, and Jananto. Her sound often explores themes of heartbreak, loyalty in love, friendship, or to one’s roots, and the emotional cost of ambition.
Zeina has referred to her career itself as a kind of relationship, one that can be the most toxic because of the sacrifices and tensions involved. Her more recent works show increasing confidence in blending Arabic elements, melodic motifs, rhythmical touches, occasional use of the oud or Arabic vocal inflections, without alienating a global audience. In her song Ur Loss, she shot the music video in her childhood home, using the traditional decor as an anchor to her cultural identity.
Zeina’s talent has begun to draw recognition. At the 2025 Juno Awards, she received nominations for Breakthrough Artist or Group of the Year and Contemporary R&B and Soul Recording of the Year for Eastend Confessions. Her streaming metrics suggest a growing audience presence, with Give Me Time and Nasty among her most-streamed tracks.
Her management is handled by mateswav, and she was previously associated with Daniel Ryan Kinney of Roc Nation. On social media, Zeina has used her platform not only to promote new music but also to engage with cultural and political issues. Around events in Lebanon such as the Beirut port explosion, she made public statements and shared personal reflections, offering a perspective that resonated deeply with her followers. In October 2024, she made a performance debut on MBC during the show Sabahel Kheir Ya Arab.
Much of Zeina’s music is steeped in longing, for home, for connection, for identity. The song Suburbs, for instance, is described by her as a tribute to Montreal, where she has lived and where part of her heart resides. Her connection to place is often both tender and fraught, she returns to Montreal to recharge, citing it as her base when she is creatively uncertain. Zeina also foregrounds the hardships of being an artist, the emotional toll, the late nights, the lean times.
She has recalled sleeping on a mattress on the floor in Los Angeles while hustling for opportunity, and how those experiences reoriented her relationship to success. For her, the road is part of the identity of the art. In her creative lexicon, loyalty is not a passing idea, it recurs. She questions not only romantic loyalty but loyalty between friends, to one’s cultural roots, and even to one’s own evolving self.
On the flip side, betrayal and heartbreak feature often as well, though she tends to approach them with a voice of reflection rather than bitterness. Zeina does not shy away from her Arab roots, instead she gradually and purposefully weaves them into her sound. She has spoken about the decision to incorporate Arabic chants or samples, drawn from traditional Arab musical expressions, into her tracks.
There is also an implicit ambition to bridge the otherness many Arab artists face in Western music circles. As a rising artist, Zeina faces common obstacles, carving a sustainable audience, balancing creative integrity with market pressures, negotiating linguistic and cultural borders, and expanding visibility beyond niche or regional audiences.
However, she also has unique advantages her multilingualism and bicultural identity make her resonant in more than one musical market. Her deep commitment to her artistic identity and her willingness to speak about the difficulties of her path lend her authenticity, a quality that fans often gravitate toward in a crowded musical landscape.
Her Juno nominations, streaming growth, and performance appearances on broader media platforms suggest momentum is on her side. If she continues to push the boundaries of her sound, collaborate cross-culturally, and harness her visual and narrative sensibilities, she could well become a signature name in the next wave of global R&B.
Zeina, known as Zeina Mates and managed under mateswav, is an artist who embodies the complexities and possibilities of our time. She is not simply a Canadian singer of Arab descent, she is a bridge between worlds, languages, sounds, and stories. Her music is rooted in R&B and pop but enriched with dialect, heritage, and emotional honesty. At a moment when the music world is more open to boundary-crossing voices, Zeina stands poised to make deeper inroads, into larger charts, into wider recognition, and into the hearts of listeners who find in her both familiarity and novelty.
