What do you get when you combine the raw creativity of a hip-hop artist, the entrepreneurial spirit of a risk-taker, and a visionary approach to the global music industry? You get Spek – a trailblazer whose love for music has helped him build a career that has redefined norms, empowered regions, and connected people. From breaking barriers within Canada’s first internationally successful hip-hop group to building the most dominant music publishing organization in the Middle East, Spek’s story is one of passion, resilience, and determination. We recently sat down with Spek to unpack his journey from artist to executive, the untapped potential of the MENA region, and why remaining a “big ass kid” has been his secret to longevity. 

You’ve led quite an impressive trajectory in the music industry, beginning as an artist and ultimately becoming an entrepreneur and board advisor. Can you tell us how this journey from artist to music business professional unfolded? 

I started in high school. Hip-hop music hit me and I became obsessed with it. At first, I had no intention other than to be a musician, artist, and songwriter. That’s what I thought I was going to do in my life, and it ended up being what I did for the first 30 years of my life. I signed my first record deal when I was 17 to EMI, and got caught up being a touring artist and traveling the world. But as is the case, when you’re young and getting into the game, you often end up making business mistakes. These early experiences as an artist within Dream Warriors taught me a lot. 

Prior to us, there had never really been a Hip-Hop group from Canada break into the international limelight. We were the first, with Top 10s in the UK and selling over a million records. Once I reached my early 20s, I left the Dream Warriors to pursue a career in the UK since the music scene was really popping in London. Up until the age of 30, I was in London working in music. At some point during my nearly ten years there, I was approached with a job offer to work in publishing. I wanted to give it a go, and that consulting job ultimately turned into an 18 month, full-time gig with a publisher. 

For most people, they wouldn’t start their first job in a new field, and then 18 months later launch their own business in said field. But due to my experience as an artist, I knew how to embrace the unknown. I grew comfortable with the unknown, and was willing to take the risk. So I took it, I followed my instincts, and my wife and I moved to the Middle East to pursue this opportunity. I knew there was a big world out there and that very few people were exploring how to tame some of these markets, so I thought launching my own business would be exciting. I jumped in head first because I thought I could make a difference, which is the same sort of modus operandi that made me a successful artist. 

What were some of the biggest lessons you learned as an artist that proved to be helpful in the current chapter of your life as an entrepreneur? 

For a long time, I felt shy about the fact that I was an artist. I wanted to be taken seriously as an executive, and I felt that because people knew me as an MC, rapper, songwriter, and producer, I felt like they were never going to take me seriously. I felt viewed as a music guy and not the typical corporate dude who came up as an intern. In a strange way, I felt slightly ashamed of my past, and felt self-conscious about being taken seriously as a music executive. I wanted to be taken seriously as a music executive. What I’ve realized over the years since  is that what I have, and others like me have, is an extremely unique set of skills. I’ve made records, toured, booked my own shows, recorded my own demos, had managers, and been in and out of record and publishing deals. Eventually, I came to terms with the fact that these experiences are an asset. I went through the school of hard knocks, and there’s no better form of education than that. There’s no better way to fortify your confidence than by dealing with rejection as an artist, and learning to come out the other side. 

The biggest takeaway that I had was not to run away from my artistic roots, but embrace them instead. That’s what makes me a better executive. I don’t care if the other guy has two master’s degrees – he hasn’t done what I’ve done in the music business in the geographies I’ve done it in. I’ve been in rooms and studios from Saudi Arabia to Toronto to New York to LA, and all of these experiences have shaped me into who I am. I’m a better executive because of it, because I understand how to credibly talk to both the creatives and the business people. 

Back in 2011, you launched PopArabia, an organization that has since gone on to become the region’s most dominant publishing businesses. Thinking back, what initially motivated you to launch this organization, specifically within the MENA region? 

As an artist, I’ve always tried to go against the grain a little bit. I fell in love with Hip-Hop because, when I was a teenager, it was very much underground. When I was first attending Hip-Hop shows in Montreal back in 1991, it felt like it was ours, and nobody else’s. In that sense, when I came to the Middle East, I started to wonder how people were approaching music publishing rights here. I realized that nobody understood what I was talking about. I had a feeling that I could do something new here and be the person to help activate change in the market here. I’d like to say that I had some grand vision for what it’d look like in the next 15-20 years, but I didn’t have a clue. This was way before digital, but I instinctively knew that a region with 380 million people was one of the biggest in the world. If we could monetize it, it would become an important market in the music industry, and would have an immense cultural impact on global music.

When I came here, it was the early 2000s, and everyone always questioned why I was picking up and moving to the Middle East. It didn’t seem like a smart decision to most people, but there was something about the energy when I landed here that made me feel its potential. I just had a feeling it would be an incredible market one day, and I knew that someone had to figure out how to bring it together. I asked myself, “What’s the worst that can happen?”. It all eventually worked out. 

If you had to explain what PopArabia is to a kid, how would you do so? 

We’re a music company. I used to call us a music publisher, and we are a music publisher. That’s certainly in the DNA of our company. It is music publishing because it’s about rights and songs. I’m proud that music publishing is at the heart of PopArabia, because that means we’re often the first ones investing in new music. These days, we’ve been acquiring new labels, so we’re distributing on all global platforms. We’re music supervisors, and help companies like Netflix and other OTT platforms with licensing rights. We’re also evolving into a multimedia company in the sense that we’re looking at projects that we’re going to get involved with from an audio visual level. We’re looking at short form and long form content. But, everything is about music. A music company is the simplest way to put it. We’re always going to have multiple verticals, but it’s always going to be driven by music. 

What’s one thing that the global music industry could learn from the MENA region? 

Well, I think it goes both ways. I think the Middle East has a lot to learn from the West in terms of infrastructure and how to develop systems that protect the rights of artists. I also think we have an opportunity to innovate in these markets. So, with the work that we've done with ESMAA as a rights organization, you know, there are things that we will and are implementing in a country like the UAE that I believe could be the gold standard in music rights. We could very well leapfrog ahead of the United States and Europe in terms of our ability to create a system that's fair and transparent and where there's no black box income where money goes missing. We have a blank slate to work with, and with a blank slate you can actually create the most forward-thinking, innovative, tech-forward approach to music licensing where every cent is accounted for and distributed efficiently. We have the opportunity to destroy the archaic paradigms that have plagued the music industry and just made it slow for artists to get paid. We can fix that, and it’s certainly the North Star that we’re shooting for. 

In addition to your role as Founder of PopArabia and ESMAA, you now also serve as EVP of International and Emerging Markets for Reservoir Media. Given that you already were a member of another music publishing organization, what was it about Reservoir that particularly attracted you to join? 

Like all things in my life, it's the people. I met Golnar Khosrowshahi, Reservoir’s founder and CEO and Rell Lafargue, Reservoir’s COO and president, and already had a history with a lot of people there. Annette Barrett, who’s the head of our UK office, signed me to a publishing deal  when I was an artist in my early 20s. When I first moved to London, she was the head of international at Warner Chappell Music. I had a great relationship with her, so I already had an introduction to Reservoir from Annette. She’s like my fairy godmother in the music business. She was the person I worked with closely for many years. When she started at Reservoir, I was introduced to Rell and Golnar, and we just shared the same vision for what the modern-day music company should be. I saw what they were aiming to do, and I thought that I could be of use to them in implementing their strategy in the US. I believed in them and their mission, and so far we’ve done a lot of great work together. 

How would you say the practice of music publishing and licensing have evolved over the course of your career? 

It’s gotten more complicated in many ways. When we talk about the Middle East specifically, there’s been a lot of progress, but a lot of challenges as well. You’re changing an entire ecosystem. Part of the challenge is education. We found ourselves in workshops with general counsels and big media companies where we were teaching them what the law says. There was always a misconception that there were no copyright laws in the Middle East, so therefore no one had to respect copyright, which is false. Education was a big part of the changes that took place. We also had to be tough. We were shaking up the system, and had to have a lot of difficult discussions with people. We ultimately were able to evolve these difficult conversations about litigation and licensing into positive working relationships. That’s how we grew PopArabia as a publisher and a label. When we set up ESMAA, that allowed us to take all of those learnings and experiences and throw it into a rights organization that could be a permanent form of architecture that broadly solved these problems across the entire industry.

So, it’s evolved quite a bit in the Middle East. On a broader level, streaming has made things much more complicated. There are many different licensing hubs and rights holders, and everyone is trying to figure out the most efficient way to license. Our systems are getting better and we’re getting better as an industry, but it’s an incremental process. 

You’ve held leadership roles across various organizations, capacities, and continents? As you’ve grown more experienced throughout your career, what’s something important you’ve learned about being a good leader? 

I think it’s about listening more than talking. Even with your own team, you need contrarian opinions to get the best answers. We’ve built PopArabia into a bigger thing, and I often find myself sitting back and listening a lot to what my team says about the challenges we have. I don’t really hire people to tell them what to do. I hire people for them to tell me what to do. That’s generally my approach. I like to hire really smart people and hear what they have to say and try to solve complicated challenges with them. 

You’ve worn a variety of hats throughout your career, including artist, producer, filmmaker, CEO, and board advisor. Which do you feel most closely connected to these days? 

I don’t know precisely what the answer is to that question. I think my current role with Reservoir is probably the most broad label of what I do. Reservoir is an investor in PopArabia, so PopArabia is effectively a Reservoir office. We’re looking at the Middle East and North Africa and building a team that’s dedicated to developing the MENA ecosystem. My role at Reservoir is to look after international and emerging markets, and I’m excited about it because this includes the Middle East, but it also includes places like India, Africa, and the rest of the world. We’re always looking at how the world is opening up, and within each of these markets is a unique musical story that is emerging. Whether it be from Sri Lanka or India or Egypt, there are so many incredible pockets of music out there. These new, global markets are presenting a lot of new opportunities and signify just how much the music industry has developed over the last century. So this role with Reservoir is something I’m very excited about. 

For young artists on the come up in the MENA region, what’s one piece of advice you’d share as it relates to getting their music onto an international scale? 

I’ve said this to people in the past, but don’t get caught up in yesterday’s paradigm. Yesterday’s paradigm for every artist was that they had to crack the American or UK markets. Those were the two most sought-after giants in the world. I don’t think that paradigm is any longer relevant, other than as a mythology within our minds. We all grew up watching those documentaries on rock and roll, hip-hop, jazz, soul music, and blues, and all of these genres came from the West. We have an idea in our minds that music success is defined as success in the West because that’s where a lot of our heroes have come from musically. But, there are more people in Africa than in North America or Europe. There’s more people in India alone. Some of India’s domestic streaming platforms eclipse global platforms in terms of volume. So, the understanding of success in the music industry has changed quite a bit. But generally speaking, I don’t think the average person on the street really understands that within the next 10 years, the markets that have dominated the global music industry are going to start to become minority players. When that happens in terms of stream count and revenue, I think we’ll experience a seismic cultural shift in terms of the way that we consume content, whether it be television, film, or music. To me, it’s incredibly exciting. 

If you could invite any one person, dead or alive, to hang with you for a weekend in Abu Dhabi, who would you pick?  

I’m going to give you a conventional choice and an unconventional choice. The first would be Sheikh Zayed. Sheikh Zayed was a poet, and the ruler of Abu Dhabi. He died a couple decades ago, but if you watch anything about this guy, he was a dude, you know? He just looked like the coolest guy on the planet. There are videos of him inviting Muhammad Ali to Abu Dhabi and the two of them hanging out. I would love to spend some time with him and talk about Abu Dhabi and the region. We owe a lot to him for building this country into what it is. The other choice is John Lennon. How can you not spend time with John Lennon? Those are my two picks. 

What’s one album you’d take with you wherever you go? 

I don’t know, I’ve got so many. The one album that made me, and the reason why I’m in the music business, is “3 Feet High and Rising” by De La Soul. I heard it in high school and it changed the way that I thought about everything. After hearing that album, I wanted to make music for a living. I wouldn’t be here without that album. I’m super proud that Reservoir was a part of the re-release of De La Soul’s catalog. It was the most inventive, creative expression of hip-hop that I’d heard at the time, and it blew my teenage mind open. 

As of today, I’m a huge fan of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows”. I find it hard to get by without listening to it. 

What does the phrase “big ass kid” mean to you? 

I think we’re all “big ass kids” in a way. My office today probably doesn’t look much different from what my studio looked like as a teenager. I have kids, and when I go to parent-teacher nights, I see a lot of people my age who look a lot older. I’m quite happy to be a “big ass kid.” Music keeps you young, keeps you vibrant. I think that’s probably what’s at the root of where the thinking of Big.Ass.Kid came from.