On a morning a few weeks ago in Amsterdam, between tour stops in Brussels and Cologne, DJ Habibeats is having a rare moment of quiet. He’s been playing packed rooms — 800 here, 1,000 there — and the crowds are increasingly mixed: Arab diaspora kids pressed against the booth alongside white loc als who are a little bewildered but just as hyped. “I had messages from people saying, ‘I didn’t understand anything about the music, but I loved it,’” he tells LA Weekly. “That’s so cool.” Despite his globetrotting and bombastic nightlife career, DJ Habibeats, real name Ibrahim Abu-Ali, always has a gracious and measured demeanor, sharing thoughtful lines through his bassy, warm voice. A few days later, he’s back in California, prepping for his largest show to date. Tonight, Friday, May 1, Shrine Expo Hall will rumble with dabke rhythms, ingenious mashups, and thousands of voices singing along in Arabic. 5,000 people will pack the venue out for the DJ’s party Habibi’s House, a scale that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. The show marks the kickoff of his 10-stop North American tour, arriving on the heels of a Weekend 2 set at Coachella and just days after releasing his new EP, Benzeen.  For context, the first Habibi’s House in Los Angeles sold 80 tickets just four years ago. The Palestinian-American DJ and producer from San Francisco has spent the years since channeling an identity crisis into infectious music and events, and in the process, created a whole Middle Eastern nightlife scene in Los Angeles and beyond. (Courtesy of DJ Habibeats) We went to our first Habibi’s House at Melrose House back in 2022 and immediately became hooked. From the perspective of this Egyptian-American and Southland-native journalist: before Habibi’s House, LA was starved for this musical outlet. Outside of weddings, hookah bars, or the occasional IYKYK bhangra in a Garden Grove strip mall, you were loath to find events that played anything resembling Arabic music, let alone large-scale cultural gatherings for Middle Eastern folk of any kind. One of our Best Parties of 2023, we’ve watched Habibi’s House grow from a modest few-hundred-capacity room to touring the world. The parties have become a pilgrimage for their incredible vibe, but also for the space they create: cousins who hadn’t seen each other in years reunited on the dance floor, the warm fuzzies of sharing a dabke with strangers who we recognize as our kin — kooky idiosyncrasies and all, the non-MENA friends who tag along but leave as converts. (Check out our interview with him at his Academy show in 2023.) Habibi’s House, when it’s in LA, is still the biggest and best game in town. But suddenly, we have all sorts of “Habibi parties” across the city, a shorthand for the wave of Arabic music events that have sprung up since.   The contribution stretches beyond nightlife. We need a calendar to track the many flavors of MENA events that now enrich our city, credited to a diverse and growing community of creatives that push the culture in all its ways: poetry readings, comedy shows, dance classes, workouts, conferences, food, fashion, pregames on Friday eves in packed living rooms filled with dancing and scream cackling (and the inevitable killjoy nagging at lagging friends, “Uber is here, yalla”) — everything. Maybe it was inevitable that we would come together, but at least from our eyes, Habibi’s House was the catalyst of scale. It proved that the community existed and wanted, actually needed this.  “He’s created an environment that feels bigger than all of us,” says Lena Khouri, founder of the entertainment and media company Between East that highlights and bolsters MENA culture. DJ Habibeats played their first IN BETWEEN Festival in 2024, and Between East has a slate of essential events in 2026. “It’s so much fun and it honestly feels magical to be in a room with people from all ethnicities dancing to Arabic music,” she says of Habibi’s House. “He’s making history in many ways.”  These events reinforce what MENA people intrinsically know about our culture, a fact that’s not always the headline — we’re warm, loving, and a hell of a good time.  DJ Habibeats (@jcrispinphoto) When I ask him about that first night at Melrose House, DJ Habibeats laughs. “It was like a massive flop.” He had no grand plan for world domination.  The idea for Habibi’s House grew from multiple sparks. As a teenager, Abu-Ali learned to DJ from his uncle, who mixed house, freestyle, and Arabic sounds at Bay Area events in the ’80s and ’90s. For years, Habibeats spun open-format hip-hop and RB sets in San Francisco and Los Angeles clubs, and Arabic music wasn’t in the playlist. “The only situation in which you’d ever find me playing Arabic music was usually a wedding,” he says. Then came law school. He graduated in 2021, passed the California Bar, and faced a choice. His practical immigrant family supported the pivot, but with some rational skepticism. “At first, I definitely got people in the family who were just like, ‘Well, if this doesn’t work out, you’ve got the degree.’” He asked for six months to a year to figure out if music was viable. Things never slowed down. The real turning point arrived during the pandemic. Stuck in his final semester, Abu-Ali started posting TikTok videos breaking down hip-hop samples and experimenting with cultural mashups. One remix of Nancy Ajram’s “Ya Tab Tab” blended classic Arabic pop with Brazilian funk. “I remember thinking to myself, no one’s probably going to understand it. It’s very niche. But I want to do it because I need to see that through.” The video hit two million views and DJs from Greece to Brazil started playing it. “I got tagged every weekend,” he recalls. “This is insane.” The inspiration to throw an Arabic music party in LA came locally. A crew of South Asian DJs called No Nazar were having events that mixed their culture with Afrobeats, house, and hip-hop. “I remember going to their events and being just blown away by how cool the community-building part of it was,” he says. “We got to have this for our community. We’ve never had anything like that.” Global stars like Bad Bunny and Burna Boy proved artists could blow up while staying rooted, and Abu-Ali wanted the same for Arab sounds. He named the party series Habibi’s House to reflect exactly that duality. “I wanted to blend both halves of my identity — the American side of me that grew up here and all the things that I love about hip-hop and dance music and house music — with the Middle Eastern Arab heritage part of me that I love all the music I grew up with.”  The first events were intimate, but within a year, they outgrew the two rooms at Melrose House. Subsequent nights at Avalon, Academy and the Palladium would quickly sell out. The Shrine feels like the logical next chapter. The growth wasn’t just local. Abu-Ali’s recently wrapped third European tour packed houses in Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. “The last three nights were all insane,” he told me from Amsterdam. “Crazy energy.” Venues have scaled up each trip. London, in particular, has exploded: a sold-out 1,200-capacity Coco last year, followed by a full takeover of the legendary Fabric (three rooms, 2,000-plus people).  Then came Coachella. On Weekend 2, Habibeats made his debut on the Do LaB stage with a high-energy B2B set alongside ZAINAB. He had joked for years that he’d only attend the festival if booked. When the offer came, he was ready. “I’m really stoked for the opportunity to showcase what I’m up to to people who might not know who I am,” he said before the set. “So that we can broaden this whole thing.” DJ Habibeats with ZAINAB at the Do LaB, Coachella 2026 (Alex Estrada @fknstrada) The new EP Benzeen arrives at the perfect moment. Five tracks, no filler. It leans hard into the club while honoring folk roots. “DAL3OUNA!” featuring Giovanni Khoury flips a classic Levantine dabke refrain into a bass-heavy monster. “It has the roots and inspiration of what you might hear at a wedding dabke-wise,” he explains, “but then is turned up to 11 in terms of the bass and the kicks.” Other cuts pull in dancehall, hip-hop, Brazilian funk, and house. The goal is crossover without compromise. “You don’t need to know anything about Arabic music to enjoy it. It’s very club-oriented. It’s very dance-oriented. It’s very high energy.” Abu-Ali signed with Empire almost two years ago, drawn by the label’s independent spirit and its founder, Ghazi Shami — also Palestinian and from the Bay Area. “We grew up around a lot of the same community,” he says. The partnership has given him studio time in San Francisco and connections across the region. “They’ve always really supported my voice. They’ve never tried to tone down the fact that I remain loud and proud about being Palestinian.” DJ Habibeats (Simon Cervantes) Family pride also runs deep. His uncle who taught him to DJ remains stunned by the trajectory. “My uncle is so proud and can’t believe where this has all gone.”  His parents, too — “I come from a very normal, hardworking immigrant family,” he says. “No one would have ever imagined that anything like this would have happened. My parents are constantly blown away by the stuff that I’m up to and the waves I’m making for our people. They’re really proud of that. It’s really cool.” Abu-Ali still visits the Bay Area four or five times a year for holidays and studio sessions.  When he’s home in Los Angeles, life is quieter than it used to be. “These days I’m never home,” he admits. “When I am, I just stay in, play video games, get coffee with friends. It’s my only time to recharge.” That balance feels especially poignant right now. As a first-generation Palestinian-American, Abu-Ali navigates what he calls a “strange and uncomfortable dichotomy.” His nights are spent creating joy in nightclubs while headlines from Palestine, Iran, Sudan — globally and locally — are heavy. “My job entails me partying and throwing parties. At the same time, you have the genocide of Palestine happening. The world is insane.”  He refuses to turn away from the news, yet he also refuses to let despair win. “I like to be aware of stuff and I like to speak up about things that I think are important or things that I think are wrong,” he says. “Most DJs who like to speak up probably feel funny because you’re posting on your story about this horrible, sad thing at some point. And then the next post is like, ‘Come see me DJ this Friday.’ It’s such a funny dichotomy. “At the end of the day, we have to be able to figure out some way to continue to keep hope alive and to continue to keep our spirits up, and believe in the opportunity that there is hopefully a better world around the corner. “I think that everybody has their own strengths. And for me, my whole life, anytime I’ve had sadness or trouble or with anything, with relationships, with stress, with anything, I’ve always turned to music. Music’s been my thing. It’s my outlet and it’s what I’m good at. I’m good at creating community around music. I’m good at connecting people through music. And I’m good at making people feel good with music.  “So that’s my strength. That’s the thing that I feel like I am called to do, so that’s what I double down on. And that’s how I feel that I’m contributing to this world, and hopefully leaving a positive impact on people despite all the craziness all the time.” Tonight at the Shrine, that contribution will be loud and collective. Ten stops will follow — Brooklyn, Chicago, Canada, the South — as the North American tour rolls out the Benzeen sound to new crowds.  Habibeats wants the culture to keep expanding, less for personal validation, more for visibility. “I couldn’t ask for more. It’s been a blessing,” he says. “That being said, I still feel that everything we’ve been up to — and not just me, but like our whole scene — is still quite niche and it’s quite limited to the Middle Eastern slash Global South diaspora community. “I think it’d be really cool to get to a point where everybody has bought into like, ‘Yo, this culture and this energy and it’s beautiful and it’s cool.’ And it’s become such a normalized thing that, who knows, there’s someone performing at the Super Bowl in Arabic. That would be crazy. But why not?” The most striking thing about Habibeats’ rise isn’t just the numbers or the venues, it’s how quickly a cultural void turned into a movement, and how that movement is now starting to stretch beyond its original box.  The party is bigger now but the idea behind it is still growing. Whether it was Melrose House, Academy, or wherever you first caught on, you can feel the throughline — the feeling that something is happening in real time. And as we watch, we can enjoy that LA finally has the Arabic-centric nightlife scene it never knew it was missing until DJ Habibeats built it.   DJ Habibeats performs at The Shrine Expo Hall tonight, May 1, with special guest Indo Warehouse. Follow DJ Habibeats on Instagram @djhabibeats. DJ Habibeats on the May 1, 2026, cover of LA Weekly. (Photo: Simon Cervantes; cover design: Mark Stefanos)   The post DJ Habibeats Sells Out the Shrine — Coming Home to the Middle Eastern Scene in Los Angeles That He Built appeared first on LA Weekly. ...read more read less