Music

If there’s a current “big three” when it comes to different styles of Caribbean music, it’s probably reggae, dancehall and soca. Between Buju Banton’s Stateside return and Vybz Kartel’s release from prison and subsequent Freedom Street bonanza, reggae and dancehall, respectively, earned much-needed boosts to their global profiles thanks to the massive legacy of those Jamaican giants. Now, it’s soca’s turn – and Trinidad is leading the charge.  
Led by a slew of joyous, anthemic hits – including leading road march contenders from Bunji Garlin (“Carry It”) and Machel Montano’s (“Pardy”) – this season’s soca anthems are connecting with audiences in a very special way. After soca band Kes played a sold-out concert at New York’s Brooklyn Paramount last year (Dec. 14), the crowd spilled out into the streets, belting out Destra and Montano’s classic “It’s Carnival,” despite the sub-20-degree weather. Last month, Montano timed the release of “Pardy” for the same week he made history with the first-ever soca set for NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. 

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Meanwhile, Trinidadian-born rap megastar Nicki Minaj joined forces with Trinidad Killa for a soca-flavored track called “Eskimo,” and she recently teased a remix of Garlin’s infectious “Carry It.” And, of course, there’s no legitimate discussion of 2025 soca that doesn’t include Yung Bredda’s “The Greatest Bend Over” and Full Blown’s culture-quaking “Big Links” riddim. 

On March 3 and 4, tens of thousands of revelers will parade in the streets across Trinidad, honoring the centuries-old Afrocentric celebrations that evolved into today’s Carnival festivities. In addition to the liberating mayhem of J’ouvert morning’s Stink & Dutty Mas and the extravagant costumes of Pretty Mas, Trinidad Carnival also incorporates traditional elements steeped in the island’s rich and sacred history. The national stickfighting competition honors Kalinda martial art and the annual reenactment of the Kambulé riots – a series of 1880s protests against colonial police’s efforts to restrict certain freedoms and aspects of culture – keep history at the center of the celebration. 

Of course, music is also an integral part of Trinidad Carnival, with a slew of competitions providing unforgettable entertainment, including Calypso Monarch, Soca Monarch, the King and Queen of the Bands, Panorama, the Carnival Road March. Before the winners of those competitions are decided – particularly Soca Monarch and the Carnival Road March – producers and artists spent the months leading up to Carnival dropping their best swings at the season’s defining soca anthems.  

On Sunday (March 2), Montano, who already boasts six International Soca Monarch wins and 10 Road March victories, won his first-ever Chutney Soca Monarch title with “Pepper Vine.” Montano came up short at Calypso Monarch, landing in fifth place with “Bet Meh” behind Helon Francis’ “To Whom It May Be” — as did Yung Bredda, who placed third with “We Rise,” his first-ever showing at a Calypso Monarch final.

Bredda has quickly emerged as one of the defining voices of soca this year with “The Greatest Bend Over,” his take on Full Blown’s “Big Links” riddim, which dropped late last year (Dec. 2, 2024). A Trini star who plays both soca and calypso music, Beedd recently appeared in Billboard’s weekly “Trending Up” column thanks to the steadily rising Stateside streaming totals for “Bend Over.” His sweet, perfect-for-all-ages track is joined by contributions from Montana (“The Truth”) and Kes (“No Sweetness”), as well as “Good Spirits,” the first song penned to the riddim and a notable step into the spotlight for Full Blown as recording artists. 

“One day we were messing with some different melodies and exchanging ideas; I would do the music and Kevon would do the writing,” recalls Kory Hart, one-half of Full Blown, from the very studio in which the sibling duo crafted the “Big Links” riddim. “The public sees the highs more than anything else, but we’ve been through a lot of difficult periods. That’s where ‘Good Spirits’ really came from.” 

After cutting “Good Spirits,” the brothers decided to make it a riddim because “it helps when people see a big name like Machel Montano as the lead artist.” Full Blown — the Trini sibling production duo of Kory and Kevon Hart — has been working with Montano for over 15 years now, so their collaboration was as natural as it was inevitably great. A later session with Kes at producer Tano’s studio led to “No Sweetness,” which would have been the final song on the riddim if not for the duo’s nagging feeling that they needed Yung Bredda on it as well. Full Blown initially brought the 24-year-old entertainer to the studio “because [they] wanted somebody who would write their own song, so that [they] wouldn’t have to do so.”  

Once he heard the riddim, Bredda wanted the duo to write the song, so the collaboration was “put on the shelf for a second.” After sitting with the riddim for a few more weeks, Kevon started sketching out an idea for “The Greatest Bend Over” while his brother was out, and Kory helped structure the song when he returned. Accented by its notable incorporation of zess, a Trinidadian dancehall subgenre, the composition and resounding success of the “Big Links” riddim epitomize Full Blown’s commitment to crafting soca that’s steeped in tradition and unafraid to push forward into new sonic territories. 

“The introduction is dominated by the tabla, a percussion instrument that’s the identifying mark of zess,” explains Hart. “It would be a typical groovy soca beat without it. Zess has a very large following among the youth in Trinidad, but [those artists] have been struggling to be accepted by mainstream Trini music – which is soca. For us, this was a very clever way of combining the two and showing the Zess artists that they do what we do, just in a different way.”  

In addition to the “Big Links” riddim, Lady Lava’s “Ring Finger” is also making waves across the Caribbean diaspora. A Trini recording artist and poet, Lady Lava has been making music since 2008, cultivating a unique lane characterized by lyrics of female empowerment. With her career back on the upswing after a down period marked by the quick succession of her first pregnancy and the COVID-19 pandemic, Lady Lava is seizing her moment – and courting new fans like Grammy-winning rapper Cardi B. 

“You don’t have a ring, then you don’t have a mister,” she proclaims over Aaron Duncan’s thumping “Summer Steam” riddim. A musical reminder to never let a no-good man pull the wool over your eyes, “Ring Finger” is a soca anthem for women by a woman – one that stands out from the scores of odes to wining women sung by male soca artists.  

It’s that feminist bent that’s allowed “Ring Finger” to enjoy such marked longevity: The song was a local hit when it first dropped in summer 2024, but TikTok virality over the fall and the winter kept wind in its sails. The official “Ring Finger” TikTok sound plays in over 22,000 posts, and the audio from a live performance soundtracks a further 13,000 posts. Last month (Feb. 19), Lava graced On the Radar with “Ring Finger,” marking a rare soca number on the buzzy live performance platform. By infusing contemporary soca instrumentation with brash lyricism sourced from her poetry background and the femme-forward approach of female dancehall giants like ’90s and ‘00s hitmaker Lady Saw, Lady Lava is ushering in a new era of soca for a younger audience.

“I still write a poem about everything,” she says. “If I wanted to tell somebody something, I would write it in a poem. Music is me putting poem to riddims, that’s how my style of writing does be like that. I like to rhyme and use metaphors and compare things that totally don’t have anything to do with each other just to get people thinking.” 

Getting people to think beyond grooving to the music is also the primary goal for Tendaji, a Trinidadian singer, songwriter, and music who bridges traditional calypso and modern soca. With a musical profile anchored by the drums and lavways (call-and-response chants) that soundtracked stickfighting competition, Tendanji is perhaps one of the most fearless Trinidad recording artists when it comes to centering history in the music.  

His most recent release, “Doh Cry,” features a music video that showcases the stickfighting tradition in a cinematic, black-and-white aesthetic. At the end of the song, Tendaji calls out the names of stickfighting warriors of eras past, including King Kali, King Bara, King David and King Stokely, honoring their influence and highlighting how stickfighting connects the Trinidad of today to its Afro-Indigenous roots. He built the song with Rishi Mahato of Maha Productions, a prominent chutney music producer who brought some of those elements to the “strongly African, strongly Jouvay energy” of “Doh Kry,” a reminder that “Trinidad is not just one sound,” as Tendaji stresses.

“There’s a lot of music out there for Pretty Feathers Mass. There’s a lot of music out there to wine and jam on Carnival Tuesday, but there ain’t nothing for the jab jab, the blue devils, the stick fighters, etc.” he says. “When Carnival Monday comes, we ain’t looking for flowers music. We want to get into character. We want to go down inside weself. Carnival has a ritualistic element, and because of my history and involvement in the character mas so much, I try to make music that reps them as well.” 

Whether through composition, lyrics or presentation, Full Blown, Lady Lava and Tendaji are all making incredible strides in defining the future of soca – especially as the genre eyes a potential global crossover moment off the back of this season’s biggest hits. Notting Hill Carnival is still several months away, for example, but “The Greatest Bend Over” has already gotten so much traction in the U.K. that it would have entered the country’s Afrobeats charts, had it fit the appropriate sonic profile, according to a phone conversation Full Blown had with BBC Radio 1Xtra personnel two weeks ago. All three acts agree that the “crossover” will happen with foreign listeners meeting Trini soca artists on their turf. The era of concessions is over. 

“I think we’re getting braver in terms of saying things the way we say it. I don’t know if Afrobeats’ [success] helped with that, but we sing it all the time down here and don’t even know what they’re saying all the time. But it sounds good,” says Hart. “I think the same thing will happen with us and our Trini dialect. Our ‘crossover hits’ have been very few and far between. We’re starting to see that soca has more appeal.” 

As the music industry marches further into this era of increased globalization, different styles and genres that may have taken a backseat in past eras now have an opportunity to lead the charge. Trinidad is churning out soca hits that will hopefully lay the foundation for future bouyon crossover hits from St. Lucia and Dominica. 

“Even the Jamaicans — who, oftentimes, we wish we were in their shoes so we could have our genres recognized — are looking to soca now because they believe that soca is the next thing,” Hart proclaims. “Our confidence is building; we’re finding our voice and our space and realizing that if we keep it up consistently, the world will catch up to us eventually.”