Rosie Awori – Montreal Community Contact – Local Journalism Initiative
After a historic win in Grenada, Montrealer and musician Stemz, is expanding his sound, preparing new music and setting his sights on an even bigger Caribbean stage. For him, the past few months have offered compelling evidence that the work is travelling.
Not simply beyond Montreal, or even Canada, but directly into some of the Caribbean spaces that shaped the music he has spent years creating. Earlier this month, Grenadian singer Sabrina Francis made history when she became the first woman to win Grenada’s Groovy Soca Monarch competition. Her winning song, “Honour You,” was produced by Stemz Productions and mixed and mastered by Johann “Madman” Seaton.
For Stemz, born Michael Ramroop S’obrian, the victory was particularly meaningful because “Honour You” was his first collaboration with Francis and it was her first venture into Soca.
“We won the Groovy Monarch,” he told the CONTACT. “It was the first time in history. Sabrina Francis was the only female that ever won the competition, and it’s our first project together.”
Stemz travelled to Grenada earlier this year after Francis’ team approached him to work on the project. Already established for her Afro-Caribbean pop sound, Francis wanted to step into Soca and went looking for the right producer.
Francis had heard “Origins,” a song Stemz produced for Trinidadian singer Nailah Blackman, and her management subsequently contacted his team.
“She’s an artist in Grenada, she’s well known, great voice, and she just wanted to try a Soca,” he said. “It was our first track together. We won the Monarch with it.”
The achievement arrives during what appears to be a new chapter for Stemz Productions.
Over the last several years, the musician has steadily built his reputation within the Caribbean music industry, but the 2025 Carnival season brought a particularly important breakthrough with “Carry It,” his collaboration with Trinidadian Soca heavyweight Bunji Garlin.
Produced by Stemz Productions, “Carry It” became one of the notable songs of the 2025 Trinidad Carnival season and helped introduce Stemz to an even wider audience. He says his work on “Carry It” has now earned him a Producer of the Year nomination at the 2026 Caribbean Music Awards.
“Out of maybe, I don’t know how many, thousands of Soca song submissions from all the islands, being selected… it’s good,” he said. “The nomination alone is a win for me.”
The fourth annual Caribbean Music Awards will be held September 19 at the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, as part of a three-day Caribbean Music Awards Elite Weekend running September 18–20. It will also mark the first time the awards have been staged in the Caribbean after three editions in Brooklyn, New York.
Stemz is looking forward not only to the possibility of an award but also to being in the room.
“There’s a day for networking at the awards,” he said, pointing to the opportunity to connect with artists, producers and other industry figures from across the region. But he is careful not to measure his career exclusively in trophies.
“Carry It did what it was meant to do,” he said. “It ended up becoming a Road March contender. I didn’t engineer it to be that. It did more than what it was intended to do.”
For all the recognition Stemz has received in Soca, however, one of his biggest priorities now is making sure audiences understand that Soca represents only one part of what he can do.
“I’ve always been working at different things, not just in the Soca genre, but also pop, R&B, reggae—that’s all stuff that I’ve always done,” he explained. “I just happen to have more of a breakthrough in the Soca arena in the last couple of years.”
His next run of releases is intended to show that range. Among them is a reggae project with artist Jay Walker that Stemz describes as one of his favourite productions currently waiting to be released.
“It will kind of make you feel reminiscent of something that you’ve already heard, but it’s totally new,” he said. “It’s one of my favourite tracks coming out of the brand this year.”
Meanwhile, Carnival production has hardly slowed. Stemz says he is already working on approximately his seventh or eighth project for the upcoming season, although not everything being recorded will necessarily be released at once.
His approach, however, is not simply to chase the biggest names available. Stemz says chemistry matters more.
“For me, it’s not necessarily how big you are as an artist,” he explained. “It’s more or less: do we have chemistry? And can we create something that is palatable, something that sounds good, something that we like, something that we feel good about?”
That philosophy is also leading him toward younger and emerging artists whom he believes have something worth developing.
The goal is increasingly to build Stemz Productions into a brand recognized not for one hit, one artist or even one genre, but for a particular standard of production.
That effort has also become more structured. Stemz now works with Vishal Urva of The Bilz Music, a move he says has brought a new level of organization and professionalism to the brand.
“He’s brought a lot of standard and organization to the brand,” Stemz explained. “He has years of knowledge and expertise. He’s one of the best in his field and has managed successful brands.”
Urva’s experience in music management was one of the reasons Stemz felt confident placing the growing brand in his hands. Since bringing him on, Stemz says the difference has been noticeable not only in the way opportunities are handled, but in how the brand itself is positioned.
For Stemz, that structure has also meant being able to focus more deliberately on the creative work, rather than having every inquiry and opportunity come directly to him.
Behind all those ambitions is another point Stemz is increasingly determined to make clear: he is doing this from Montreal. In an industry where Canadian artists and producers are frequently presumed to come from Toronto, he has grown accustomed to correcting people.
“Too many times people think I’m from Toronto,” he laughs. “They just assume automatically when they hear Canada, they think I’m from Toronto.”
He wants his growing list of credits to help change that perception.
“Montreal also has a lot of people in it doing things and making an impact,” he said. “Montreal has people doing the same things at the same level, with the same intensity.”
To catch up on all things Stemz follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stemzproductions/
