Yammaia, Haddad's fourth album, was released in late 1998. Haddad recorded each song on the album in a different Arabic dialect: Original Arabic, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Gulfian. In "Yama Ya", Haddad touched on several topics, such as love, life and death, faith, and virtue. Sadly, shortly after the album was released, Haddad's mother died, and hence the album's theme became more personal than ever for Haddad especially since the album title track Yammaia means "oh my mother".

The track 'Ana El Ensan' (I'm the human) is still considered unique and unusual for a modern album as it uses classic Arabic and is classified as 'Malahim', an older lyrical style. The song talks about human selfishness, dishonesty, jealously, hypocracy, and greed, and concludes with the classic 'ashes to ashes' theme. Haddad made a video for this song in 2006, and released it as a charity single to support Lebanese families during 2006 Israeli / Lebanese war.

Chart success

The album achieved success, but promotion was impacted by Haddad's mother's death and her mourning. The Egyptian title song in the Saeedi dialect Yammaia became #1 single in many charts in the arab world, and the music video set in Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

 and filmed near the Pyramids became one of the memorable iconic Arabic music videos of her career and of 1990s. 'Emshi Wara Kidbohom' was also a #1 single and even did much better than Yammaia on charts. Both videos were directed by her husband
Suhail al-abdool

Suhail Al-abdool

Suhail al-Abdool is an Emirati TV and music video director. He owned a record label called al-Abdool and 4 TV channels called Nojoom TV. He is the ex-husband of Diana Haddad. They got married in 1995 when Haddad was still in her late teens. They have 2 children; Sophie and Mira...

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Info

Initially Haddad only filmed two songs of this album because of her mother death. The song 'Ana El Ensan' was the third song to be filmed from this album, but not until 2006.

Track listing

1. Yammaia (4:42) [Saeedi Rural Egyptian Arabic]
2. Men Ghebt (4:09) [Saudi Arabic]
3. Se De (5:49)
4. Ana El Ensan (10:25) [Classical Arabic]
5. Barreia (4:57)
6. Ana Beshhadlak (5:14)
7. Sayegeen Al Zaan (6:49) [Iraqi Arabic]
8. Emshi Wara Kidbohom (5:44) [Egyptian Arabic]