Henna (song)

"Henna"
Single by Cameron Cartio featuring Khaled
from the album Borderless
Released	2005
Format	CD, Digital download, Radio
Recorded	2005
Genre	Middle eastern Pop
Label	Epic, Sony/BMG / Universal/Avang Music
Writer(s)	Alex Papaconstantinou (music) Khaled, Cameron Cartio, Marcus Englöf (lyrics)
Producer(s)	Alex Papaconstantinou

"Henna" is a song by Swedish pop artist of Iranian origin Cameron Cartio featuring the raï Algerian singer Khaled (musician). Music was composed by Alex Papaconstantinou to lyrics by Khaled (Arabic) and Cameron Cartio in Dari language. The song was produced by Alex Papaconstantinou and mastered at Cutting Room in Stockholm.

The song was from the debut album of Cameron Cartio entitled Borderless. The Khaled involvement came after Cameron had broken up with his girlfriend who was a huge Khaled fan. So Cartio, then an aspiring and relatively unknown artist wrote the lyrics in his own conlang and sent them to Khaled, who agreed to add his own part as a tribute to Cartio's ex-girlfriend.

The song was released on Sony/BMG and Universal and for the Arab World on EMI Arabia. In addition to popularity in Sweden and throughout the Iranian diaspora, the song became hugely popular in the Arab World basically because of the involvement of Khaled in the Arab diaspora.

Original 2005 release in Sweden

2006 release in Sweden

Khaled appeared with courtesy of Universal where he was signed

As had happened with his earlier 2005 hit "Roma", Cameron Cartio released a Spanish language version of "Henna" featuring Khaled in Spain with the Cartio conlang being replaced by Spanish, although the Khaled verses in Arabic were kept the same.

A music video with the Spanish lyrics was released by Cameron's brother Alec Cartio. In addition to the new Spanish version, the 4-track maxi CD included separately the original conlang version and also two remixes by Ferrero.

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Wikipedia