Habibi (I Need Your Love)

Album: Single Release Only (2014)
Charted: 36 66
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Songfacts®:

  • This stand-alone single features vocal contributions by the song's co-writers - Australian singer-songwriter of Lebanese origin Faydee and Romanian record producer Costi Ionita - as well as Swedish singer of Congolese origin Mohombi. The multi-lingual track's lyrics are in Arabic, English and Spanish, "Habibi" meaning "my love" in the Arabic language.
  • A different version was done targeting the American, UK, Japanese and Australian markets. This recording excludes the Arabic language segments with Faydee performing his own parts in English instead. This version was re-titled "I Need Your Love."
  • Shaggy previously worked with Costi when he was a featured artist on The Romanian producer's 2010 single with Bob Sinclair "I Wanna." He told AntiMusic the story of the song: "Costi came to me with as skeleton idea on a new song called 'I Need Your Love' that would feature Mohombi and Faydee ... The minute I heard the idea I immediately was drawn to its feel good vibe of the track."

    "I took my phone out and started to lay some melodies while I was on the road, by the time I got to the studio to cut the vocals I was very excited with the song and the vibe I had come up with."

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