PopArabia Called 7liwa an Independent Artist When It Signed Him in 2022. Sony Music Middle East’s Own 2019 Announcement Says He Already Had a Label.

On 14 March 2022, PopArabia announced it had signed the Moroccan rapper 7liwa, born Ihab Ikbal, to what the company called a worldwide recording and publishing deal, done “in conjunction with” Reservoir Media, the Nasdaq-listed company that has held a stake in PopArabia since January 2020. The announcement covered 7liwa’s existing catalogue and future work, including the single “Hallelujah,” released four days earlier on 10 March 2022. Neither company disclosed a fee, an advance, a royalty rate or a contract term, and nothing located since has added a number.

That makes this an unusual entry in this desk’s deal records for a different reason: most signings split cleanly into one lane or the other. A label deal covers the master recording. A publishing deal covers the composition, the song as written, administered separately from whoever owns the tape. PopArabia’s own announcement claimed both lanes in a single sentence. Checking a claim like that means checking two different things: who the phonogram credit names on 7liwa’s releases, and who, if anyone, is named as his publisher on the composition side. Only one of those turned out to be checkable.

What the catalogue shows since the deal

Apple Music’s own catalogue data, pulled directly from its lookup API on 1 November 2026, lines up with the announcement on the recording side. Every 7liwa release checked from “Hallelujah” forward carries a PopArabia phonogram credit, with no gap and no other name appearing in between.

On the evidence this desk could check, the recording side of the 2022 deal has held for four years without a credit change. The publishing side is a different matter: no public performing-rights organisation this desk could search, ASCAP and BMI’s open repertoire tools among them, returns a writer or publisher record for 7liwa or for his legal name, Ihab Ikbal. Morocco’s own collecting society, the Bureau Marocain des Droits d’Auteurs et Droits Voisins, has no public search interface. Reservoir and PopArabia’s press release calls the deal a publishing agreement; nothing independent of that announcement confirms which entity, if any, now administers 7liwa’s compositions, or on what terms.

The deal before the deal

PopArabia’s 2022 release introduces 7liwa as an artist arriving from “independent releases,” citing close to 250 million combined YouTube streams built without a label. That framing is accurate as far as it goes for his earliest work: Apple’s catalogue shows a run of self-released singles from 2016 through 2018, each carrying a phonogram credit of “℗ [year] 7liwa,” with no company name attached.

It is not the whole story. On 8 April 2019, Sony Music Middle East’s own newsroom announced 7liwa’s debut single with the label, “Ohlala,” describing it as the start of a run of releases including an album planned for later that year. Apple’s catalogue confirms the credit: “Ohlala” carries a phonogram line reading “℗ 2019 Sony Music Entertainment Middle East.” A second single from that period, “Ça tourne dans ma tête,” released 16 September 2021 with the rap duo Faux Contact, carries a different credit again: “℗ 2021 Or Format,” a label this desk could not independently identify or trace to a registered company. Neither relationship appears in PopArabia and Reservoir’s March 2022 announcement, which moves directly from “independent” to the new deal without naming either.

None of this contradicts the 2022 signing. It does mean the “independent artist” framing in the announcement understates 7liwa’s label history by at least one major-label deal and one unidentified imprint. Nothing located, in any statement from 7liwa, Sony Music Middle East or PopArabia, explains why the Sony relationship ended or how the catalogue moved from one company’s phonogram credit to the next.

Who controls PopArabia

Reservoir Media’s own SEC filings describe its relationship to PopArabia inconsistently across fiscal years. The Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2024, filed with the SEC, states under “Our History” that “we acquired a stake in PopArabia in January 2020,” without the word “controlling” anywhere near it. The Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026 describes the same transaction differently: “we acquired a controlling stake in PopArabia in January 2020.” Neither filing, nor any other Reservoir annual report this desk read directly, states what percentage of PopArabia that stake represents. The language changed; the number was never given.

What this means for artists

A signing announcement is marketing copy written by the company doing the signing, not a neutral account of an artist’s history. It will usually describe the artist in the terms most flattering to the deal being announced, in this case as an independent success story about to be professionalised. That is not dishonest, but it is not audited either, and an artist’s own back catalogue, sitting in plain view on the same streaming services covering the announcement, is often the only check on it.

The sharper point is the one this record keeps returning to across different artists and different countries: a recording deal and a publishing deal are separate legal relationships, even when one press release announces both in a single breath. Confirming that a company owns, licenses or administers your masters tells you nothing about who, if anyone, administers your songs, and the reverse is equally true. An artist who only reads the headline of their own signing announcement may not know which of the two claims in it, if either, is independently checkable from the public record.

What is not established

No fee, advance, royalty rate or contract term for the 2022 PopArabia and Reservoir deal appears in any source located. “Not disclosed” is the accurate entry, not a gap this desk failed to fill.

No public performing-rights registry confirms who administers 7liwa’s compositions. The deal’s publishing component rests entirely on the companies’ own announcement.

Reservoir Media has never, in any filing this desk read directly, stated the size of its stake in PopArabia. Whether it is a majority holding, and if so how large, is not established.

Why 7liwa’s catalogue moved from Sony Music Middle East’s credit in 2019 to an unidentified label called Or Format in 2021 and then to PopArabia in 2022 is not established. No party has described the transition in public.

The corporate status and ownership of Or Format could not be established. It appears once in 7liwa’s catalogue, on a single release, and this desk found no registration record, newsroom or ownership statement for it.