Epic Records A&R President Tricky Stewart and Motown Executive Vice President of Urban Music Ethiopia Habtemariam, provide industry gems and music forecasts at the Music Biz 2013 40 Under 40 panel.
Record executives
Ethiopia Habtemariam and Tricky Stewart were both honored at Music Biz
2013, a four-day music industry event jointly orchestrated by NARM
(National Association of Recording Merchandisers) and digitalmusic.org
[major trade associations in the music industry]. Both honorees were
participants on a panel hosted by Billboard entitled The Future of the Biz on the Future of the Biz
last Wednesday. The event, which took place at the Hyatt Regency
Century Plaza Hotel, recognized individuals on Billboard’s 2012 40 Under 40 Power Players list.
Understandably thrilled about this distinguished honor, the two shared their excitement.
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| Tricky Stewart (left) Ethiopia Habtemariam (right) |
“Anytime that you’re
being honored, or anytime someone thinks of you as a person of influence
in your area, and believes that you have enough information for them to
ask you questions, it’s always an honor,” says Stewart. “It means that
you’ve done something great, and at the end of the day we all just want
to be productive and looked at as being good at what we do.”
“It was great to be
honored by Billboard; I feel extremely blessed,” says Habtemariam. “I
don’t do panels that often; I’ve only done one other one recently for
ASCAP and I was super nervous, but this one was great. I think it was
great to be in this forum and have all of us kind of talk about the way
we work together. I thought it was a very informative.”
After the event the
Sentinel sat down with both honorees to trace their ascendance to the
executive ranks of the industry, and chart the future of urban and pop
music.
EVP/Head
of Urban Music at Universal Music Publishing and SVP of Motown Records
are pretty hefty titles for someone who hasn’t even turned 40 yet. Such
are the laurels of Ethiopia Habtemariam, a skilled record executive
whose hustler disposition and go-getter attitude landed her an
internship at Babyface’s LaFace Records when she was just 14 years old.
“I did everything,” explains Habtemariam. “I used to babysit people’s kids to make extra money. While
I was interning, I was doing street team work, promoting parties—you do
what you can, but you must take your job seriously.”
It was ultimately her job as an assistant, however, that would introduce her to the music publishing world. While
at LaFace Records a woman named Laronda Sutton—who headed LA Reid’s
publishing company at the time—was impressed by the way Habtemariam
answered the office phones, and eventually took her under her wing.
“People recognize how
great you are by the simple things you do,” she explains. “I think a lot
of times young people mess up because they don’t take it seriously
enough.”
With a decade of
experience, the busy executive is channeling her passion for music
through her artists. She attributes much of her continued success to her
refusal to sign acts that she is not 100 percent passionate about.
“I only work with people that I can connect with and that I am naturally passionate about—that’s just the way I work. I
have to have a passion and a connection to their music, and then a
connection with them as an artist or songwriter, because if I don’t have
it then I’m not going to work as hard for the artist—and I don’t ever
want to be in that position.”
As the key creative
executive, she also has a hand in shaping the ever-morphing face of the
legendary Motown Records. Not only is Habtemariam responsible for
signing new talent, but also for preserving the legacy behind the label
by re-establishing the types of acts the label signs. Thus she has been
working tirelessly to repackage the new face of Motown by developing
acts that have both cross-genre and cross-generational appeal. To date
Habtemariam has worked with and signed some of the biggest names in the
industry, including Ne-Yo and his Compound Entertainment record label.
She was also responsible for appointing him Sr. VP of A&R. Also
prominent on her impressive roster of clients are Justin Bieber, Chris
Brown, Ciara, Polow Da Don, J Cole, and Hitboy, just to name a few. Most recently she signed the Grammy Award winning R&B superstar Miguel.
“I do think that it’s
important to have more of a variety and range, specifically in urban
music. It’s a passion of mine to make sure that we show all of the
perspectives that exist in urban music, because I don’t think that we
are getting enough of that. I think that you only see one perspective.
We [Motown Records] have some artists that talk about being in the
streets and doing music, and that’s their expression; but we have
artists like Stacy Barth who has such a strong message in what she wants
to say to young girls specifically. Or Kevin Ross—his music feels like
you’re listening to Stevie Wonder on the Songs in the Key of Life album.”
Habtemariam is also working hard to bring R&B music back into the mainstream.
“There will always be a
place for R&B; it won’t go away,” she stresses. It’s honestly the
base for all genres of music if you ask me. It really is on us as the
executives, the creators of the content, the people who write and
produce, and the people that actually perform to take it up a notch.”
Habtemariam is more
than just your run-of-the-mill executive. She’s the people’s executive,
putting in the work to take the music business to another level.
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