Saudi music producer Saud Alturki: 'High Octane,' Busta Rhymes and the pressure that made him

The TWENTY30's co-hosts Hanaa Almoaibed and Lucien Zeigler sit down with Saud Alturki, Saudi music producer, curator, and founder of Brij Entertainment ahead of the release of his third album, High Octane. A project two and a half years in the making, the track list reads like a love letter to hip hop royalty. Busta Rhymes. Swizz Beatz. West Side Boogie. Rhapsody, whom Saud calls his favorite female MC alive today.    Working with his creative director Chindi, who turned every production conversation into something closer to a therapy session, Saud landed on a concept that's deeply rooted in where he's from, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.   Saud takes us back to the beginning: a freshman at McGill in Montreal, freezing through his first Canadian winter and discovering that music wasn't just something he loved — it was something he could do. A move to LA, a chance encounter at a Verizon store with a gospel-tinged R&B singer named Bernard, and seven years of patience later, he finally put out his first single. That story alone sets the tone for everything that follows: Saud is someone who builds slowly, deliberately, and for keeps.   But the conversation doesn't stop at the album. Saud talks about what it really takes to build a music industry in Saudi Arabia — not just a music scene. Venues, labels, studios, government support, festivals like Middle Beast that have built an entire ecosystem around artists. He's careful to say Saudi isn't quite an industry yet, but the infrastructure is finally arriving, and the talent — including his Brij Entertainment artist Hajaj, the first Saudi to perform at Grammy weekend in LA — is already outpacing it.   There's also a sharp, honest take on the streaming era, why dropping albums in 2025 is "not the best move" (and why he's doing it anyway), the emerging Saudi genre Hoppe — a fusion of Sambri and hip hop that he wishes he'd invented — and what he tells young artists in Riyadh who have every resource he never had at 17.   High Octane drops after Ramadan.