Rome: Culture, Carnival, and the Business of Entertainment | The Corie Sheppard Podcast

In this wide-ranging conversation, Rome joins us to unpack a career that spans engineering, music, radio, television, and cultural leadership. From his early days as a mechanical engineer at Petrotrin to becoming one of Trinidad and Tobago’s most recognisable entertainment voices, Rome reflects on the risks, pivots, and purpose that shaped his journey.

We dive deep into the state of Carnival and live entertainment, including venue shortages, promoter challenges, and why Trinidad and Tobago still lacks purpose-built cultural spaces. Rome shares rare insights from his time as former President of the Promoters Association, explaining how policy gaps, policing costs, and weak consultation continue to affect the sector 

The conversation also explores:

• The evolution of soca parang and why generational renewal matters
• The creative discipline behind writing clean songs for dirty minds
• Lessons from failure, from empty dance floors to breakout hits
• Behind-the-scenes stories from VH1 reality TV, international stages, and LA acting school
• Why projects like Carnival Catwalk and Ultimate Soca Champion are about building pipelines, not just shows

At its core, this episode is about culture as industry, risk as growth, and the responsibility of creatives to build platforms for the next generation.

🎙️ If you care about Carnival, creativity, and Caribbean excellence, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

👉 Click the link in my bio for the full episode
#coriesheppardpodcast

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Venues Crisis
• 3:10 Deflecting Media And First Comments
• 6:20 Trinidad’s Venue Shortage Explained
• 10:00 Residents, Noise, And Policy Gaps
• 14:20 Why Lead The Promoters Association
• 18:40 COVID Press Conference And A Seat At The Table
• 24:20 Fixing Policing Costs With Risk Matrices
• 29:10 Speaking Out, Fear, And Victimization
• 33:20 Engineering Mindset And Early Life
• 38:40 Finding Performance: Calypso, Hosting, TV
• 44:50 First Soca Attempts And Failing Onstage
• 49:40 Birth Of A Parang Artist
• 54:20 Organic Growth: Bars, Radio, And Gigs
• 58:50 Weddings As Stagecraft And Brand
• 1:03:40 Leaving Engineering And Golden Handcuffs
• 1:08:20 VH1 Cruise: Casting, Chili, And Carnival
• 1:15:30 COVID Rut And Reinvention Online
• 1:19:40 Writing Lila And The Destra Collaboration
• 1:25:20 Double Meanings Done Clean
• 1:31:20 Building Parang With Rome
• 1:36:40 Bridging Generations And DJ Gatekeeping
• 1:42:20 Clean Lyrics, Corporate Sets, And Church
• 1:47:10 Why LA: Learning Acting From Scratch
• 1:53:20 Immigration Reality And Self‑Tapes

Transcript

Corie: 0:06

Anybody have any questions? I'll send it with like me to ask for him. So we have to do that. Oh, good God. Welcome to the Corey Shepard podcast. My name is Corey Shepard, and not Conrad Beer. Today we have one of them guests who play in so much different realms, pause, that is making it hard to remember what is we're talking about and them kind of thing. Well, everything good, brother. I did, I did. I tell people this has been a long time in the making. Everything working against getting a room here, but we have him here. David, where are you pointing at? You had to talk into the camera. I'm not talking into no camera. We can give up on that plan. So it's been one of them difficult things where you had to remember all these things. But I want to start with cultural backing and all confusion, canker, and commerce something. You know what I mean? And I have a man here who's a former president of the Promoters Association. And I watch the news RL questions for you. You know, you're good Saturday. Keyword is former, right? So asking opinions here. I was watching um, particularly in a group we have with David and them with promoters on soon. I know you're in the group as well. With so many events or venues, I should say, being cancelled and getting smaller and smaller and smaller, pool of venues to choose from. I'd ask you, what's your thoughts on that? You know, I don't play on the spot in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20

So, I mean, a lot of the media has reached out to me to get a comment on all of these things that have been happening. I have been deflecting. Yeah. Yeah, because I felt as though I was the president of the promoters association for four years. For two terms, I served back to back. And I felt it was time for me to give it up and give somebody else an opportunity. So I kind of, every time I got a question from the media, I would say speak to the new president of the Promoters Association so that they would be able to get the voice. Um, so I haven't spoken on it, so you're the first to hear any of my um comments and remarks. What I would say is that Trinidad and Tobago lacks entertainment venues on the whole. So if I I travel a lot and when I go, I would see they would have multi-purpose facilities like stadiums that would be used for different concerts and sports as well as everything else. And we lack that here in TNT. So if you look at most of the uh venues that promoters would use for events, they're very close to residential areas. So as you would have seen with the Taruba um scenario, that you would have residents close to that, you would have the stadium, you have Woodbrook residents who are complaining for years about that, even in the Queen's Park Savannah, the Belmont residents or the Oval. So everywhere that we have events, um, you're gonna have residents who are complaining, and that's because we don't really have a proper plan in place when it comes to the entertainment sector. And I saw the government roll out a revitalization plan for Trinidad and Tobago in terms of building um stuff on the waterfront and revitalization of the San Fernando waterfront as well. But I didn't really see much when it came to the entertainment sector. So my advice would have been in that as much as they're trying to pacify the residents, and and people are right in that you must be able to enjoy your space peacefully because if you have a house and they're coming and throwing these feds, it will bother you.

Corie: 3:15

Everyone and Griffin James, I know what that is. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00: 3:18

So I understand the plight of the people, but then I also understand the plight of those in the cultural sector and entertainment sector, is that okay, where do you want us to have the events? There was a point in time where we used to go shag around us and do events a lot, and men would just clear space in the bush and have it down there. And then CDA kicked up of us and said that the music was affecting the monkeys. But it did, yeah, yeah. So for a while you couldn't have events done on that side unless it was like O2 Park or something like that, right? So I feel what needs to be put in place is to have discussions with the promoters and with the sector itself to see, okay, where are the species we're going to earmark and develop for us to have um cultural events and to have event spaces are not going to affect uh the average citizen of Trinidad and Tobago. A place that I always looked at was the space behind um movie tongue. To me, if you utilize that most residential space, yeah, and then you could face the music to the sea, and it wouldn't really affect most people.

Corie: 4:18

That might be the other thing. But it's a it's a good idea, and it's it's one of them things where there's a conversation that's been happening for decades, you know. Like even when you look at the Savannah, residential as it might be, we're talking about for years many, many iterations of the government saying that they will make this interspace because the the rebuild and bail back, you hear about that all the time, and the costs associated with that. I mean, Napa might be the closest we get to it, but um, and I mean your comment is also fair that the the questions it's only fair that they're directed to the current administration. But it it leads me to the question of you, I've always seen your career and looking at you over the years, you successful, you're good looking, you can say that. You know what I mean? You need everything going for you. Why would you go up to be president of the promoters' association? It seemed like one of them things where there's that no thank you kind of job, it's all just pressure.

SPEAKER_00: 5:04

And it it was that um, so how that came about, right? Is that I am a very vocal person, I'm very passionate about culture. So, and the arts and entertainment on the whole. I mean, I left an engineering career to do entertainment, and it wasn't for the money, obviously not, because I leave a big engineering work to come and do this, right? Um, is that I did it for passion. And I used to do fets back in my UI days. So I was studying engineering in UI, and my sister's boyfriend at the time, he had a company called Rave, and they used to do a party on a beach called Sahara. And he came to me and he said he liked my business sense and all of that, and if I would partner with him to do the fet as well. So we started to do Rave. Um, started to do Sahara on the beach, on Rakkas Beach, and then it evolved, and we did many different events. So then a guy called me and he said, Boy, we have some Gali Promoters Association, and we wanted to come to our meeting. Just say here. It was at St. Anthony's College, and I went there. And at that meeting, I was just hearing them talking things. And I was probably the youngest and smallest promoter at the point in time. But I started to let my voice be heard at the meeting and gave them ideas and saying, Here's what we should do, and answer unit this is what we should do, and all of that. And then a couple weeks later, they were going to have an election. And um, some of the guys who, some of the big, big, big promoters reached out to me and they said, you know what? We heard you in that meeting, and we feel as though you're very level-headed and you have a business mindset and you have no allegiances, meaning that a lot of the time you would see somebody big promoters, I wouldn't call names, some men they might have, let's say, either a political alignment or they may have where you're getting government funding and you're free to speak out because you don't want to be victimized. But because I had nothing like that, I had nothing to lose basically. So I could have spoken freely and without prejudice, and I didn't really have nobody to study. And I sometimes a mad man, I would just say what I really feel, and I really don't I don't put what I'm about to say things, so I will come at you direct. So they felt I'd be a good president, and I would say I was in my opinion, and a lot of people would say that I was a good president, in that I put the entertainment sector first. So the terms are two years, and I served two two-year terms back to back. At that point in time, we had to speak up against the government because I'm now became a promoter's association president, and bam, COVID hit. And the government at the time, they weren't really talking to us in terms of the entertainment sector. We were the first to close and we would have been the last to reopen. So at that time, I decided, yeah, what guys, we're gonna have to do a press conference and speak up because we were writing letters to the ministry and asking the minister at the time for a meeting, and we weren't getting any nothing, crickets. I guess because people didn't really respect the promoters association as an entity in the entertainment sector. And when we did that press conference, then we caught the meeting with the minister, and from then on, we had a seat at the table so that before nobody used to study us. But then now, whenever you talk about the entertainment sector, Trinidad and Tobago, the Promoters Association, Trinidad and Tobago Promoters Association always comes up because now we have a seat at the table, and people realize that a big part of Carnival are the private sector promoters because you have all of the big mass bands are part of the promoters association. So you would have all of the big fets that people would fly in for the the the sooker brainwash, the pink neck, the the tribe, the all of these people are part of the promoters association, all the mass band owners or the big ones, all the big ones, all the humor, everybody is there. So if the promoters association decides one year, you know what? We're not gonna throw any fets, we're not gonna do any of our bands, then what's gonna happen to Trinidad Bigos Carnival? So then they realize okay, these people are uh stakeholders in the carnival space and in the entertainment space that we need to pay attention to. So that's how I I led it in that way. But as you said, it doesn't come with much perks, it's not a paid position. It was not paid at all. No, it's not paid at all. Um, it was a labor of love, and it was me also trying to effect change in the sector and structure it. Uh another big um issue that I would have tackled would have was the issue of police in fets, police and fire, and the number of police officers.

Corie: 9:26

The randomness of it.

SPEAKER_00: 9:27

Exactly, and the randomness of how they decide how many police officers to send to an event and that kind of thing. And I again I held a press conference and I I I spoke sharply against the police officers, and it was because we were seeing something happening where they didn't have a proper system in place in which to decide how many officers to send an event. So, what I devised along with a friend of mine who's also an engineer, we did something called a risk assessment matrix. So, because I have an engineering background and I was in oil and gas, we would have had this matrix to decide on what is a high-risk event or what is a high-risk uh venture, and then you would know how to assign um officers based on that. So we developed something with an Excel, Excel spreadsheet, and we delivered it to the police. They were very impressed. We sat with them, we worked it out, and they agreed on a ratio of how many officers to send forward to an event based on this risk assessment matrix. And I left that there to be signed, and then the the commissioner at the point in time changed, the people who were involved changed. I stepped down and it just remained there. So that's the trend begun in the story. You can say that about many things, right? Still before the police just to sign off on it, and then you would see a change, but it never really took it.

Corie: 10:38

Well, you see, the way you're talking about there is why I start with our question, huh? Because without but respectfully to everybody who was there before and the people who are there now, I had never heard about the Promoters Association before. I just didn't know there was a body. Right. And my first impression when I hear Promoters Association was cartel. I said, all right, there's price control, this is why I had to pay so much for brainwash tickets, you know what I mean? I shouldn't say brainwash myself, only other fair tickets, right? But you know, you understand? That's my first impression just as a layman watching it. And I do remember that COVID press conference. I do remember you speaking up on it, and I was like, wait, there's room like parent room, you know, box people in there. I was like, what the hell parent room talking about? You know, you understand? But I remember how pointed you were very you had to be heard, let me put it like that, right? And um I I was excited to ask you the initial question because I kind of wonder if you were the promoters association president today, with all due respect to the people there, I know it's hard working, I know it's unforgiving. But I wonder how vocal you would have been now when those things happened. I I I I look to promoters, maybe as individuals. I I like FET more than anything else. Maybe there's more in my own biases. So I found that you know the venues started pulling back. I don't know hearing from the biggest promoters or the biggest mass bands or the promoters association. Maybe I just missing it. You know what I mean? David, I'm a busy, but I'm not hearing those voices responding to it.

SPEAKER_00: 11:58

It is very sad because people are afraid. People are scared of being victimized when they speak out. And Trinidad and Tobago is a small place, so it is very easy for somebody to come and speak out on something like this, and then you hear, okay, they're not gonna get funding for this, or they're gonna be blocked for something like this. So I know that there are a lot of people afraid of that, and then too, you have sometimes you have a disjointed um collective where sometimes one promoter might speak out on something and say, Listen, this is affecting me in this way and whatever, whatever. And another promoter who might be like, Well, you know what, this isn't really bothering me, no, I don't have enough at in that stadium, and they remain silent on it. So you you would have those uh pulling and tugging within organizations, but once you see you have a unified front, then you'll be able to stand up and be vocal. But again, for me, I was that president who would be vocal whenever I see something um that I didn't agree with totally, I would come out and speak on it. So in this scenario, if I was a president in that case, I would be asking for a meeting with the prime minister to have discussion. So where it would be a case where I understand where they would be pulling back venues because it's affecting residents, but I feel as though discussion should be happened before discussion should happen before decisions like those are are really made final. Where come let's sit on a table and let's discuss it and let's see what alternatives we could have first before we kind of roll out those things. And I think that's what the promoters really want is more um discussions and and consultations before any final decisions.

Corie: 13:36

Yeah, maybe maybe clarity. I heard in that same group, Laura Doritz will talking about just promoters identifying for people where their venues are because a big part of for we say culture sometimes, I feel it relegates it to something as an industry like any other industry. And then uh you you you talk about the police thing. Vocally, you were you're you're bigger than that, and you know, the layman who go in our fat. We don't know none of this, eh? So we're learning as we go along. But in business, a certain amount of predictability or where my course could be over. I mean, it doesn't so uncertain already. I would love to know if I go my Fed grow to this size, this is my police course, which is where your Excel sheet kind of showed. It it shows maybe some of that engineering background. Maybe we should talk about that because our partners are engineers, Zelma Boy engineers just look for problems and solve them at all. So you think that that is what you're implementing as you go along?

SPEAKER_00: 14:24

Yeah, it it is a big problem-solving um career. So I was a mechanical engineer. Well, I will always be an engineer, right? So I have a BSc and a master's in in engineering. And uh both at UE? Yeah, both at UE. So I would have studied engineering in UE mechanical engineering, and then I went on to petrotrin. So I worked petrotron for 10 years, and I was the youngest ever, well, one of the youngest ever superintendents, which is like a head of a department. I was 29 years old when I became um superintendent, and then I became senior superintendent at the point in time. So I was like a senior manager managing a lot of the maintenance departments, that sort of thing. So I would have had a staff of over 100 people under me. I was 29 when I was superintendent, and then I was 30 one year later when I was senior superintendent. So I was 30 years old and managing these, these, these it's something else when you look back at it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It really was something else. So because of that engineering background, it gives me a very logical problem-solving mind. So I am always looking for a solution. So in everything when it comes to entertainment, now I am looking for okay, where are the problems, where are the gaps? How could I solve these things to help the sector to improve? And that's what my whole mindset is with everything that I do in itself.

Corie: 15:49

So, growing up, that's what you wanted to do. Do engineering, you grew up with that in mind?

SPEAKER_00: 15:52

Boy, I I when I was growing up, I wanted to be a priest.

Corie: 15:54

Yeah. What went wrong?

SPEAKER_00: 15:59

What happened?

Corie: 16:01

Seriously, that's what you wanted.

SPEAKER_00: 16:02

What school did you went to doing? I went to Rima Boys RC, and then I went to Mary's College. Oh, all right. Most of Mary's men want to be priests. Not at all. Not at all. But my godfather was a priest, Father Michael Moses. Um, God rest his soul, he died. And I always met my parents, who I would say they were Mary and Joseph in the church. They were very, very church-going people, and they were a big part of the church, and they still are. So my parents are Eucharistic ministers. I was an acolyte, I used to sing in the church choir. They belonged to like this community called Wood of Life community. So we were, I used to go all the time, used to go something called Kids Praise. I used to go to Sunday school. Yeah, they have prayer and worship. So I was heavy into the church as a child. Um, so I always used to look up to my godfather and I always wanted to be a priest. So I remember going to church a day, and they're asking all who want to become priests or give their life to the Lord. And I was about six years old, and I jump up me because that's where I thought my life was going. Then I introduced a woman, and then that changed.

Corie: 17:08

This one, father.

SPEAKER_00: 17:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. After I hung up, some kind of woman that I shouldn't that was say, this priest thing is not for me, bro. Delilah on the loose.

Corie: 17:24

This priesting is not for me, bro.

SPEAKER_00: 17:27

So even then, you have entertainment or engineering, or I used to do something called verse speaking from standard one. So the IMA boys I was a well-rounded school, a primary school. They would let you get to dabble in different kinds of things, right? And the principal at that time, he would Mr. David, he would have had poetry and verse speaking. So verse speaking is like a form of poetry where you're just standing and it's like a spoken word kind of thing. And I have a picture with me from from performing in Queen's Hall at about in Standard 1, I'd be what, six, seven years old in front of a huge crowd doing my verse speaking. And then I would do a lot of calypso. So I entered the calypso competition in the school in standard two. My sister would, my elder sister, she wrote, she wrote um my first calypso. And every year I liked it. My mother would take me to the seamstress and she would make this outfit because back then calypsoans used to really dress up. So when I go in up for Calypso competition, mommy going my retailer or the seamstress and making sure I have my full out of camera thing and all of that. And I love that performance side of things. So in Arima Boys RC, I went, I never won the competition. I had a fella named Lenroy James used to beat me right through boy. Oh god, boy. He had an uncle who used to write for him, and I couldn't be this man for nothing. Corey, I come in second and third, right through this man, boy. This Lenroy James fella. Anyway, I left, I left Arima Boy's RC and I went to CIC and I in Form 1. But I wasn't big, so people think I'm big and I'm strong. When I was in school, I was tiny, tiny, tiny, real smally. So I had this tiny boy in form one, and they had their calypso competition. Kes was going CIC with me at the time. But Kes was in form six, and I was in form one, and he was winning out everything. But when I reached, I hear about this man named Kess and he winning everything. And Nick Lenroy again. Yeah, but I was like, oh God boy, I can't catch a break. So I decided to enter the Calypso competition in Form 1 with a song called Move Your Feet. And I came fourth in CIC's Calypso competition. But then CIC used to have a joint competition with St. Joseph's Convent. So the top four from CIC versus the top four in convent, and we go across in convent. Them days they used to have a white um uniform before this kind of Pizza Boys uniform. Yeah. And we gone across there, boy, and time for me to perform. And Kes was actually my backup singer, because one of my backup singers couldn't make it on a day, and Kes jumped in and support it. So we Up cats for that. And it was just a feel the whole image of this tiny small man on his stage. I used to do a dance with it. And I do in this movie feet dance. And every time I did the dance, all the girls screaming, and you have a kind of cuteness factor to go with it too, right? I would and I won the competition. And at that point in time, I say, but wait now, I have something here. And every year I would have entered for the next three years. But my father was a real strict, strict, strict person when it came to schoolwork. Okay. So when it formed three reach, he said, Yeah, well, you see this Calypso thing that you like. You're not going to be the next Mash in Montano. I used to play football for the school too. Yeah. And he said, You're not going to be the next Dwight York, you're not that good. So you see, you see that football thing and that Calypso thing. Yeah, go easy. Done with that. Start to prep for CXE. And that was the end of that in terms of my um musical career. But I would always still get to host stuff. So my father, he was heavily involved in the church, but he also used to host all the church concerts. Anything in church having, my father was the host. So I used to look up to him hosting and he would tell the steelest jokes ever. So I used as a child used to be so ashamed when my father telling jokes. I would come and give him a joke to go and tell. And then I started to host as well. To he would let me come with him sometimes and host stuff. So he allowed me to host, like in CIC, I would host like prefects concert and that sort of thing. And then CX came and I wanted to be a doctor. But my father was really, really strict again. So I wasn't allowed to have a girlfriend. I know nothing about no girlfriend. Up until form five, I get to carry a girl with me to grand. That was the most I could get. Then he kind of Lego the delish a little bit in form six. Boy, and then all her. And lessons was the thing. Because back then. You remember them thing? Lessons were scoring. Yeah, I went from Arima Boys IC Boys School to CIC boys school. Right, right. I don't see no girls at all. So I tell my father, I say, yeah, my birds, I need lessons. I didn't really need lessons. Real bright. I used to come first in the top three in test all the time.

Corie: 22:18

Yeah, we need lessons.

SPEAKER_00: 22:19

But I need lessons. Because in my mind, lessons I get to meet. I mean kids. Man and informed six. I have four subjects out of the four subjects, three of them I taking lessons just to get to go and meet kids. Boy, and them days my father work in UI. And um he used to drop me um to UI. So like they give you this time off after your study A levels to prep for exams. So he used to drop me, take me with him to UI because he don't want me home because he feels I'll be distracted whom I used to play real video games. So he said you're coming with me. He get a library pass for me in UI. So you go in UI and you're going to stay in the library eight hours for the day. Because he's in the office. Right. And he picked me up after the thing. Man, and as I go on in UI day. It's Jal. The library has question. I coming out of the library because I in a school here now in UI with rare girls. I Roman and the bongs of girls and line. So my father dropping me to the library to go and study A levels. And I go in the library, check in, put on my books, and I coming out and go online. Because I was supposed to be on the part. At that point, I wanted to be a doctor. So I wanted to study medicine.

Corie: 23:30

So you're doing sciences and things in the world.

SPEAKER_00: 23:32

So I was doing sciences, yeah. Uh to be a doctor. And man, I played fool for A-levels because again, girls, and the girl at the time who I was interested in, uh, she went to convent. Man, but I didn't realize these girls are smarter than me. She lining at me any day. But she's going home any night and beating book.

Corie: 23:51

Yeah, then them doing SCTs and they go on.

SPEAKER_00: 23:54

Corey, when A-level results come out, I cannot get into medicine. Right. But I think, well, my father working you we. So he go pull some kind of string for you, boy, and I will get into medicine. Yeah, I don't get four A's. Back in them days, you had to get four A's, and even if you have four A's, you still can't even show to get in. I say, Nah, man, Daddy have me. The man say, I not looking no bottom for you to get in that. He said you will go and repeat if you want to do medicine, or whatever your grades are good enough to get in with you, you will go, you will study that. Luckily, I scraped through and I got into mechanical engineering.

Corie: 24:36

But I mean you do pretty good stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 24:37

Yeah, yeah, I still did well, but I just didn't get the four A's to do medicine. But I did enough to get into engineering, which is still good. Of course, of course. But for in the hierarchy of education, at that point in time, medicine was here, and engineering was under it kind of thing. Yeah, of course, of course.

Corie: 24:54

These people are mentally people, these are things like that then.

SPEAKER_00: 24:56

Yeah, yeah. So I got into engineering and and it was a better choice for me because later on in life I realized I don't really like to see blood that much. Yeah, mesh, and that'd be weird for be a doctor and like to see blood, right? So everything worked out.

Corie: 25:11

Well, we had similar experiences because I do new tongue boys RC and then went um went Fatima. So was boys' schools all the time, but then I do A levels in Tranquil. So I know that feeling all hell break loose because when I went tranquil, it was over. It was a rap. But when you do primary school in Arima, how you end up in St. Mary's your family originally from Arima, yeah?

SPEAKER_00: 25:29

Originally from Arima. So people feel like born with a gold spoon in my mouth, yeah. And I feel like a lot of of Trinidad and Tobago in terms of looking at fair skin people. Somehow you feel a red man have money, and I did not have money, bro. I was born and I grew up in Malabar in Arima. Very humble beginners. My parents still lived there as five children, and we didn't have much at all, right? Um, but one day when my parents used to take me up to Carnival, take me and my sister up to Carnival, every Carnival Tuesday into Porter Spain, and we would watch the mass. But without fail, they would coca pot a pillow and we would go to Nomadie Square and thing and watch it. And at yeah, they took me up, and we walked on Frederick Street and I saw St. Mary's College for the first time. And I said, What is this thing? Because it looked to me as a child very magnificent from the Frederick Street side. On the Pembroke Street side, you just see concrete, right? But if you watch it from beautiful, beautiful from the Frederick Street side in terms of the lawn and the grass and all of that, and the big clock and all, and I was like, Where's this thing? And then my mom said, That's St. Mary's College, as our secondary school. And I said, I want to go to this school. And I just set my mind on that in terms of going to that school, right?

Corie: 26:37

Yeah. So you do that early morning from a remote.

SPEAKER_00: 26:39

So luckily, my best friend up to this day, his dad uh was a teacher at Mukarapo, Senior Comprehensive, and he lived in Malabar as well, too. And he passed for St. Mary's College too. So what used to happen is his dad, yeah, would drive up the road and I would get, but I had to wake up five o'clock in the morning every morning for years. And it built in me now. So now I still disappear. Yeah, because I ended up doing early morning radio.

Corie: 27:01

Imagine that, imagine that you just built for it since it's amazing how sometimes exposure with young people because that's seeing that building, look what that do for you. Or even though it's looking for girls, that's sitting down in that library holding the exposure to UI. Like a lot of us where I grew up in St. James, our and your experience might be the same in Malabar, where you have plenty of UTS line with any area, plenty of UT line with any block, but it's few have any conversation about UE and tertiary education at that time. But them little exposure and your father being there and stuff, you know, might create a spark.

SPEAKER_00: 27:30

But my father was very strict. So in terms of, no, I used to get to go out and play football. You had to be inside before dark, right? But he had a way where you come home from school school finishing 2, 2, 3, 3, whatever. He reaching home half past, he reaching home 5 o'clock, and he going in his bedroom at half past five, and you come in with him. So here were you doing? He had a table in his bedroom, bro, for my sister, a desk, like school desk, and for myself next to each other. And at 5 30, my sister and I had to report in my father's bedroom. Sit at that desk and do your homework and do studies from 5:30 to 7 o'clock. 7 o'clock again a break to watch the news up until sports. After that, sports dinner, and then you shower, and you come back, do one hour of work and in bed. Every single night. Monday to Thursday. We used to get away on a Friday. Monday to Thursday from primary school straight till form five. Yeah. Until you lego released a little bit in phone six. Yeah. Well, you know what I mean? But that, but, and it worked.

Corie: 28:35

It worked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you could see that. So you're running into mech, which was one of the more difficult things to do on campus and stuff. But you have the discipline to cope with that. And so where UE years was like then.

SPEAKER_00: 28:44

So U We was a funny thing, yes, boy. Um, I entered UI in year one, and I really didn't have the party life like my other friends would have had in in CIC. So them fellas used to get to go nuts and bass and all of that because they were living in the US. I live in a rima. Their parents used to drop them to party and pick them back up. My father nut. Yeah. He's not dropping me no coconuts or even a remote and then come back three o'clock in the morning. But year one in UI, Zen was a big thing. And um, I found my way in terms of getting a bit popular in Yui in year one. That I got my own list, my own VIP list in Zen. Serious. So I used to have my own VIP list in Zen.

Corie: 29:31

Um that we can you put you get to put your people on your list.

SPEAKER_00: 29:34

I had to put at least 10 people on my list who getting free. Oh, and the drinking free.

Corie: 29:38

Oh, we get us. We see red man think this is why we say red man. Oh, you get this. I never hear about this in my life. No.

SPEAKER_00: 29:45

Oh how it ended up playing out is I was going up for student activity chairperson in year one, which was like like the Minister of Culture at a point in time, yeah. SEC. And people I was starting to become popular with it. And another guy who um he wanted to run for the position and he had the the Zen list. So he tell me, yeah, what small man? Because he was a older fella. He said, chances are you winning this election, slim. It's hardly ever ever year one to come in and do it. Um, but I have a listen. If you bow the race, I'll give him a zen list. So I say, Well, yeah, how you mean that?

SPEAKER_02: 30:30

So I bow the race and I am less and I gone through and I gone through with it.

Corie: 30:41

So you could pan pick birds in the UE and that part of the bigger.

SPEAKER_00: 30:44

It was social currency, it was social currency. That is what in those days, too. My father, when I go into lime, he gave me$20 a lime. That can't do nothing. That can't do nothing. I used to ask him just to borrow his car, and I would have pumped with that. Yeah, and I had a fun time. UE was a real fun time for me. Yeah, yeah, one and two, I did a lot of partying, had a lot of fun. And yeah, three is when I really buckled down and codegrad. So, also with engineering, is that you have to get at least an upper second to get any of the big jobs. So to work at any of the big oil and gas companies, you had to have a second over there.

Corie: 31:19

That's B plus average.

SPEAKER_00: 31:20

Yeah, so you had to have a GPA of three point something higher, right? So that's when I rail kill it in year three. I I kill it. All is so that I could have brought my GPA back up after I had my fun in year one and two, I had to buckle down in years three.

Corie: 31:35

And um, masters would have been difficult too. So your grades are good enough to.

SPEAKER_00: 31:38

Masters was actually much easier for me than on Twitter.

Corie: 31:40

But difficult to get into. So I got a scholarship to do my master's. Oh, for this weekend, this red man's paying off. You could get a scholarship to do your master's from you, eh?

SPEAKER_00: 31:49

No, I got a scholarship from Petrotrin to do my master's.

Corie: 31:51

So after bachelor's, you went to Petrotron already? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:53

So after my bachelor's, I went to Petrotrin and I was doing pretty well in Petrotrain. I was like a real work jumping in Petrotrin. I was a graduate trainee and I started, but I always wanted to learn everything. So I was the pest. You gave me something to do, I do it fast, and I'll come back and I say both worlds here for me. And then I hear them boys going out on the plant, I suited up in my coverall and I go in with them because I just wanted to learn as much as I could about as much as many different departments as I could. So they moved me around from one department to the next, and that helped me to learn as much about petrotron as I could. So I knew most of the refining. So that's where you advanced so fast too, necessarily. And then people saw in me that I was a leader and that I also was very enthusiastic and very efficient when it came to my work. So when I went up for the scholarship, they would offer a certain amount of employee scholarships every year, and then I was granted one of these scholarships. So I was lucky. So that paid for my tuition for me to do my master's in UE. I went and studied something called engineering asset management, which is mainly into maintenance, because I always felt that even now in Trinidad and Tobago, we're great at building stuff, but we're terrible at maintaining it. So it's all about doing for me. I focus on something called preventative maintenance, and is where you put things in place to do the maintenance before it breaks down. Can you make it as part of the planning process? Yeah, because even in machinery, but with your cars, you do uh well changes preventative maintenance. You don't wait till you hear a knock in your car and then you go to fix it. You try to do the things beforehand, but a lot of people do that. You have reactive maintenance versus preventative maintenance. So if you're really maintaining your vehicle how it should be, according to the manual, it will tell you when these bearings are supposed to change or when your brake pads are supposed to change, all of these. So you have certain elements of maintenance that you can do beforehand versus when you're in a situation like petrotron in the oil and gas industry, you can't wait till things fail. Because if something fails on you, it could cause a fire, and a fire could cause an exposure, and then people could lose their lives. So you're putting preventative maintenance in place to prevent failure from actually happening.

Corie: 33:55

Gotcha, gotcha. So in those early or UE is a place where, um, like you say, the leash girl Lego, one of the things that you find is that if you if you, for instance, were in performing very, very young, UE had them kind of spaces too, like Calypso competition, so cutting, UE have its own kind of value.

SPEAKER_00: 34:11

Was getting involved in them things that anything new, we had in terms of not schoolwork, I was involved. I was involved in anything because engineering was so intense. Of all the faculties, it would be engineering is something that where you had to go to class for 8 a.m. and you finishing at 5 a.m. And on a Monday, after you finish 5 a.m., you had something like technical drawing for engineers from like around 6 to 9 p.m. Right on a Monday. So all the other faculties we watching Society and they out and they lime in and they think because they have free periods. We have no free periods. So only on a Thursday from I think after lunch on a Thursday, they made it mandatory that you have no classes to allow people to get some kind of flexibility. So at that point in time, anything on a Thursday afternoon I was involved in. Red Bull would have come on campus and do flu tag. We entered that. I was in Red Bull Flu Tag. We did, they would have different competitions. DJ Song Clash, I was in that, I was a Mike Man, I was singing. Anything they had, I was involved. I playing um for one of the teams in UI. So I played football in Gwadi. Yes, I in that and I involved in all of those things. And then what happened was my brother heard an ad on the radio saying that they were looking for television hosts for a new show called Party Flavor. So I remember a long time they had party time. Then Synergy TV came out. At that point in time, Synergy TV was huge. Everybody was watching it. And Synergy TV said they're gonna have a show called Party Flavor, which is a spin-off of party time. My brother was like, Boy, go on audition and go on audition. I was like, I never do TV before, really. He's like, Boy, go now, boy. And um, I went for the audition and they picked eight hosts. Hans DeVins was one of them. So they picked four hosts who were the four main hosts and then four backup hosts. And I was in the batch with the four backup hosts, and I cousin.

SPEAKER_02: 36:06

You don't even know you host something a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00: 36:08

Boy, so I cousin, eh? Because we ain't getting like a footballer, ain't no sweater on the bench. Right, right. Man, and it's four hosts too, because now they rotating these people, so now I know you ain't no chance. So I write to walkout, and at that time, O'Brien Haynes was the man behind everything, and he said, No, no, no, no, no, you don't go. You will get a chance, you will get a chance. Boy, and like one of the guys who had him, one of the main hosts, he messed up one day and they sub him out and they put me in, and that was it. I became one of the main hosts, and Hans and I were the ones who hosted the finals of Party Flavour that year. Umi Makano, I think, won that party flavor that year. And then from that, I kind of had a snowball effect in my entertainment career because then Synergy TV had a top 10 condom called D Scene, which was something like TRL or BT 106 and Park. And Hans and I was hosting that while I was in UE. So I would say to get more and more popular because now I'm on TV with that. And then Synergy had a show called Synergy Next Top Model. Right. So I went and I entered that. And I gone up there, and I remember the first episode, Paul Richards watched me on the ball. He just a plain red man. Send him home and send me home. Episode one. And I say, Wait, this man a real dog boy.

SPEAKER_02: 37:20

This man is a real dog, boy. Big fill for that. As direct as they come.

SPEAKER_00: 37:25

So I stand up there, and I guess send home. So shame, shame, shame. All these times I knew we and um then I I became a full-time engineer after I left Yui. And I could have only done the entertainment stuff on his side. So I started hosting weddings on his side, so like on a weekend I would host weddings, and then um I I I wanted to do so. So I always wanted to be a soccer artist, right? Yeah, so after I did my master's, I kind of was like push this to my father, and I say, Here what? I'll give you a degree, I'll give you a master's, I'm an engineer. Now it's time for me to do something that I want to do. So I think my girlfriend at the time. So you're supportive? You going with it? No, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 38:11

My father wanted to hear nothing about that. You mad about you're not an engineer. What are you telling me about soccer? You looking for hardship. You are life in front of you. You're mad.

SPEAKER_00: 38:21

My girlfriend at the time, she heard me talking about I want to do so, I want to do so. She bought my guitar to play it, to learn to play it, and she was real supportive. And um, she said that she knew a guy called Madman Johan, right? Johan Siton, and that they are producers and whatever. She took me to the studio and I met him. My boy, and I was just amazed being in a music studio for the first time. And I told him I want to be a singer and whatever, whatever. And he said, Well, go and write a song. So I went back home and I wrote the soccer song, and I thought it was gonna be road match. I swear there's it here. There's it here. So you and them come, they produce the beat for me, and I think I have it now. This is my first time, and I real excited. I got an interview on Synergy TV because of the connections I would have had. I perform on the Friday Night Live thing. Then I got a they used to have a Woodford Cafe in movie town. So they used to have like this amateur night kind of thing, little bits used to be the host. I go on there, and all my friends come in and support me. And I think girl come out and I wine on her. The name of the song was Push It Back. And she push it back, right back, right back, girl, push it back. Man, and the video I'm gone viral within my little spaces. And up my same brethren who I used to throw Sahara with Chris. He used to do Zen on a Wednesday night. He said, Boy, I doing zen on a Wednesday night is UE night. I think you go mash them up like how you mash up Woodford, you go mash up UE night. I say, Well, yeah. All this time I'm engineered about left UI a while back. I say, but UV is micro because I know everything. Man, I pick up two dancers and we practicing with And I had two girls and we dancing and thinking full routine. If you check me, I'm so cast and mode. Man, and I gone on the Zen stage the courage, and I shouting out because from you so I shouting out, yo, big up Nat Sai, big up so side, and everybody rah rah rah tunes at a drop.

SPEAKER_02: 40:18

Crickets they know the song. I knew you there know me. The two dancers again, like they need a sandwich. And I just died on the stage.

SPEAKER_00: 40:36

It was the longest three minutes of my life.

Corie: 40:38

We finished it, you do it.

SPEAKER_00: 40:39

I finished it. I finished it. I said thank you. And I run off that feeling shame. I feel so shame. I realized I wasn't ready for a big stage like that. And that's something I tell artists now is that you think you want to go and perform on a big stage, but it takes time for you to get on a big stage like that. And I would say hit the ground running in the smaller zones first before you put yourself out there because you could embarrass yourself. And that was a really embarrassing moment for me. But it was a wake-up call. So I didn't really stop there and I just kept on doing it.

Corie: 41:11

But it's good advice. That's the part of this good advice because some people will not keep on doing it. We have a lot of people who I hear had that. You know how much people I hear say when they do their full song, it's all those road match, and then when they get a crickets, they're done. But I feel like that's a part of it. You had to go through that. You had to go through that. You had to get past it.

SPEAKER_00: 41:28

It builds character, it builds character because now I can take anything. And I have been through it, I've been through it before. And then from that, again, so was always it for me. I always wanted to be a soccer artist. So this parang thing for you. That wasn't a part of it. Now, parang was something I grew up listening to as a child. I hated to do chores, as with most children during Christmas period. But I would play the soccer parang, and it would help to make the chores lighter. I'd love the comedy of Sprang along and how he would tell these stories and that sort of thing. I love Kenny G with the double unturned, right? And I was like, I always love parang. But to think of me being a parang singer, nah, that wasn't a thing. And what happened was Mevon Soudin, who was a partner of mine from a long time through Marcus Brave Boy, and he sent me a parang rhythm. Again, I'll never forget I was in Petroun and it came true. And he sent it around.

Corie: 42:26

But he knows you're singing your trends of Billy Carey. How come he sent it to me?

SPEAKER_00: 42:29

He would have only known I was singing because I did that one sooka the year before. So he knew I was starting a thing. And he sent it to me this parang rhythm, and it had Marcus Brave Boy and a couple of the um who is now um Brave Boy, and he sent it to me and I said, Nah, not another parang thing. The next year now, he sent me another parang rhythm. And I say, Man, this has a vibe, you know. And I went up Tuku in a beach house with some friends, and we lyming and whatever, and we drinking, and we had like a kind of karaoke kind of night. And I put on the rhythm and I sat a freestyle. And I freestyled a song called Liquor. And it was again a double-meaning song where she wore me liquor as in the alcohol, but she wore me liquor, right? And I wrote this song out when I get back home. I say, but it's actually because people like this song when I performed it. They laughed and whatever. And I wrote the song out when my memo and I recorded it. And the song was a hit. So I started to I started to get gigs to perform the song in little bars, in little small shows. Back then it had like um Blue Tantra and all them kind of thing. And I performing in these little holes, Roscoes, and whatever, whatever. Was it days? Yeah, and and man, and I start people signing to like the song without it playing on the radio station, they like any performance. And again, on wild too, because it's a girl tune, so I sing it to you. I'm a liquor and my tongue out of my mouth, and whatever, whatever. Many girlfriend at that time, she didn't like that at all. Even though she was encouraging me in music. This liquor song is a trouble song. She's seen how people responding to it. Yeah, she's seen all these girls responding to it, and then my tongue out my mouth, and it not becoming of what she wanted as a boyfriend. So that was the beginning and end of us in terms of that. And um, it just started to evolve. After I sang that liquor song, Optimus Productions, who is who's the manager for Young Brother now, he reached out and he used to do parang every year. And he said, Boy, I had this parang with him, I saw you perform. Back then it was Aria was the club, I'd perform an Aria the liquor song, and he was there and he saw it. And he said, I had this rhythm I will come and write a song for it. But at lunchtime, I'm a petro train cover hall, and I went by Optimus because he was from South. And I stand up there in my Petrotrain cover hall on a lunchtime, and I recorded a song called Lovable. And that was my first hit. That song started to get me more and more bookings and I in these speeches.

Corie: 45:00

So that on radio and them thing knows.

SPEAKER_00: 45:02

Now it started to play on radio in terms of lovable, but I had no radio connections really to get into the game. So it organically did that. And there's something that is tell younger artists because people just call me and ask me on radio, now could you help me get my song on radio and how to do this and whatever? And I would tell them how I built my career was from me growing up, you know. It wasn't no link, no connection, no nothing. You know, it was performing in as many species as I could. Every hawk and spit back or read I could have found, I go in there and I singing in it. Any any bazaar, any school dance, any anything, but a stage and a mic, I did and I singing and I giving a hundred percent. So that when you see my performance now, who is this man? What happens is you never know who in the crowd. So what used to happen is some of the DJs who on radio in the crowd, they hear any song, they see any performance, and now they're going back on the radio and they playing it. And that is how come the songs started to play.

Corie: 46:00

Yeah, several artists come here and say it missing, you know, from today. Because you see, that direct it youths now have an opportunity, I feel, with direct to consumer. Because you you don't you don't need need radio. You could you could really build a big buzz without radio, which could also always the case, but you have to build on the ground. Now you could build from home, right? So a lot of times what I see in is songs that I like, and youths where it's like, oh, we come up with this. That then when they see them in person, it lacking something, and it can make it fall off if you don't want to build your own song. Be was saying, for instance, you say, You come in and perform your song and you ain't want to perform, he said, if you don't like your own song, you want me to like it. So and that the idea of people in the crowd so optimists see you, and it's a length and it's going on. But somewhere in between, and I'm not sure about the timeline. At that point in time, you're hosting things something already, stage is comfortable for you.

SPEAKER_00: 46:48

Yeah, a hosting. So I again, while I in Petrotrain on the weekend, I hostings, I hosting weddings, which I never thought people would have wanted a wedding host itself.

Corie: 46:57

So how you start that initially? Because you have a way of building your brand as an individual. That that started from since then.

SPEAKER_00: 47:02

Yeah, a partner, he had his wedding, and because I was the most vocal in the in the in the crew, again, he asked me to host it for him. Just like the promoter association and somebody again in the crowd who saw me host our wedding, asked me to host their wedding, and then I started on Instagram. Back then, Instagram came about, I started posting um a series called Epic Weddings. So I used to show people, well, here is a wedding tip for today and whatever, and we had this wedding and whatever, and then people started to see me on Instagram hosting weddings, and then started to hire me. But because I could sing and perform, when I host in a wedding, you get in a combo. So you have somebody who hosts any formalities at the weddings, who introduce any speakers, will give you a little joke in between, we'll give you a little heartfelt message, but then they're lovable too. Yeah, I also able to start the party, interact with the crowd because a difficult part in weddings getting people on the dance floor and having a fun time. So I am the man who will start the party for you, get the crowd going, wake you up, and then take you straight up into our fit because I could sing covers, even though it's not all of my songs. I know most of the soaker songs that are popular, and I could take you up. When people started to see that in videos and in life, when they come to a wedding, then that just snowballed. So people just started hire me to host weddings.

Corie: 48:27

I had that experience once more. Maybe it's the podcasting, you know, you're talking, so people hear you vocally. Could talk. And partner asked me to host a wedding boy. I don't think I'll ever do that again. I I can't do that, boy. Because I mean, the thing about it is I suppose I could host an event, I could carry, I could talk, I could make two stale jokes and things. But those things are the things that what you do at Keeks, you're doing the same thing. Or several people who do wedding hosting, y'all responsible for the vibe of the whole thing. And I don't know that I was equipped to do that. I could talk, I could introduce this one to talk, but boy, one thing happened, right? One, I think it was the groom model. She have she don't know a microphone is like an amplifying device at all. So wherever you put the mic by her, she leans. So she and I trying to figure out okay, what are we doing now? You know what I mean? And then that transition from the formalities and his speeches to get the party started. Boy, that wedding flop immediately. I was like, all right, everybody, thanks for coming out. I so glad my part done. I was like, thanks for coming out, good time.

SPEAKER_00: 49:20

It's like, no, you had to get the people to party like how so it's something you enjoyed doing, something love, love, love doing wedding. People come there to have a good time, and there's free food, free drinks. I mean, well, once again, come here. So weddings are always, always fun. Um, to to to host and to perform at.

Corie: 49:40

Yeah, tong say when you call room for your wedding, make sure your budget is good enough.

SPEAKER_00: 49:46

Well, you would see the type of weddings I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's because I built my brand over a lot. I doing weddings must be 15 years now. Oh, it's not. Yeah, yeah. So I've host probably over 100 weddings. I've seen everything when it comes to weddings. So I think I build my brand to the position where it's at now where I could call a price, and people would they wouldn't budge to pay it because they know it's not just you're paying for a host again, you're paying for a host and a performer. And I there for the whole thing. So when I go to a wedding, I host an idea for six hours, you know. See, so our weddings usually from six to twelve, most weddings.

Corie: 50:19

I think people in other doubts about the quality they're getting when they get you to host the wedding. And it's a day, it's one of them days, one of them days in your life that's memorable and forever.

SPEAKER_00: 50:28

And you don't want to play with that. You don't want to play with that. Yeah, yeah. That is not and you play with something that is going to live on in your life forever. You will always remember that. Yeah, and hopefully you only do it once. Oh, yeah, and hopefully you only had to do it once.

Corie: 50:45

But again, it was something that I've very, very curious in talking to you because it seems as though, and maybe it's just me projecting it. I always feel more like daddy. If I reach the heights of engineering, get the engineering work and get that kind of money. I'm not sure that I want to go and try something. Because when you're trying something else, you're you're you're back in zen on that stage with crickets. The truth is, it don't matter how much you accomplish in one field, you're kind of starting from scratch somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00: 51:10

So that was that was a difficult decision for me to make, right? In 2017, I found myself every day when I wake up in the morning, entertainment is on my mind. Suka music on my mind, music on the hole, just entertainment on my mind. Every morning I gave up to go to work as an engineer, no bite on my mind. And every lunchtime, I would go on Julian's promos and I looking at every single soccer release, every single soccer powering release every day on our lunchtime. I eat my lunch and I listening to where's the new releases coming out because I just so interested in it. So you could have said what I know all the hit songs before they even become hits, because I have an air for it. Because I listening to all the releases, and I realized this entertainment thing pulling me, drawing me, drawing me, drawing me. And I want to try it bad, but I'm scared. They had something in the engineering world, they used to call the golden handcuffs, where you're getting paid enough money that it's gonna keep you in handcuffs where you're not gonna leave your position, even if you're not happy, right? And um, it wasn't I wasn't happy with engineering, but I felt as though entertainment was my calling, right? Something calling me. So my boss at the time he was real cool, and he knew I was singing and and and doing parang and um hosting on his side and all of that on weekends. And I went to him and I said, boss, yo, I want to take a year off from engineering and I want to try this entertainment thing full time, right? Now, in Petrotrin, they could they give you like a leave of absence. You could take a leave of absence for like a year if you want to go to school or if you're a personal disuser, whatever. So I was gonna take. No, you're not getting paid. Oh, okay. Yeah, you still have a work when you come back after a year, right? Time off without pay. Oh my god. So I say, well, I'm gonna want to try it. I want to take a year off. He said, here we are. The rumors only grown that the place might close. Right? So wait it out a little bit. He tell him to read between the lines. So happened, the rumors were true. Petrotrin closed. So we were allowed to go home with a little severance pee. Oh, so I see you were there when Petri closed. Yeah, when Petritin was closed. So I was there. I was at senior manager when it closed. Right. So I was allowed to go with a little severance pee, which could have helped me buffer me a little bit. However, majority of our severance pay went in paying off a loan I had because I'd open a um I'd open a pizza business at a pizza restaurant.

Corie: 53:29

You know more rum I soak up? I didn't know you owned that. Let's quick slice. Quick slice pizza. Yeah, that thing soaked up a lot of rum in the quick slice pizza.

SPEAKER_00: 53:38

I'd owned that. So I had to pay off that loan. So I used a lot of the severance pay to pay off that loan, and then the little bit remaining was my little buffer for engineering, for um, entertainment business. And the my same boss, he said, Here's what you're going on this journey, he said, give it two years, give it two full years, give it your all. He said, and if it doesn't work out, I need you to come back to engineering, right? Because he thought I was a great engineer and a great manager. So I say, all right, cool. So um I went there and I was giving it my two years. Man, Petrotron closed in November, Corey. In December, I get a call from my manager, Andre Jeffers, who wrote Pi. I see, I see. He's my manager, so shouts the perception management. No, he was my manager and managing my um entertainment side of my career. And he said, Boy, we get a call here from a company in New York. He said, Very strange. He said, Well, I say on the highway. He said, Till my can go home and take this call for me. I say, sure, boy. He said, Yeah, I'm going home. Them days I live in bamboo. So I'm going. And I sit down in my apartment and I get this video WhatsApp call from this lady from New York. And she asked me to tell me about tell her about myself, and then she told me, explain Carnival to her. Because she's a foreigner and she doesn't know Carnival. And after I told her what Carnival was, she said, We have a TV show, a reality TV show coming up, and you need to be a part of this. She said, Because that explanation of Carnival that you gave me makes me want to leave where I am in the coal now to come to Trinidad to experience this carnival thing that you have. And then she asked me, She said, You have abs? I say, Yeah, she said, I could see. I say, but what can I interview that says, boy?

SPEAKER_02: 55:22

There's a black mountain interview there, so we was waiting for Danny to release the I was wanting Danny to let me go free. This is the kind of interview we're looking for.

SPEAKER_00: 55:31

So your boy raised up my shit, bro. And I show her her abs and thing. She said, You have a problem if you have ladies like celebrities all over you and I show. I say, Bring thing now, man. I have a problem. Because at the point in time I single, so she asked if I single and thing.

SPEAKER_02: 55:46

You see, the girl was right to run it on the right thing. She does the right thing. She sees she smells right.

SPEAKER_00: 55:53

So I I didn't take pain at no mind because she's not giving me much detail. She's just saying this reality TV show, whatever, whatever. Man, and a couple weeks later, January, I get this call saying, Could you come to New York on Friday? This is about Tuesday. This woman called me Tuesday to say, Could you come to New York on Friday? I say, Well, yeah. She said, Alright, cool. Ticket book, whatever. You need to go and do a psychiatric evaluation. Went do the psychival. Then I went to a company called Big Fish Entertainment. Googled them and realized they were huge in the reality TV series world. Went up there, going into an office, meety people. They love my my um aura and my energy and whatever. And then they show me this wall with who are the casts of this TV show. They ain't tell me the name of the show yet. Man, I see Lil Kim, I see Maya, I see Chili from TLC, Corey, and I am like, all again, people looking like them. Is them in it too? Man, I couldn't believe this thing. So I say, alright, I calm, whatever. I still I'm a real funny person. I don't ever get excited for something until it actually happens. Because I have been in situations where somebody carried to the beach on their layer bed. And you see that blue balls effect? Yeah, I can't take that. I can't take that. So I did as calm, think, think, think. Man, we see now weak of that. We needed to fly to Barbados to meet the boats. And this is the cast members. Why are we going on that boat, Curry? It's VH1, yeah. It's VH1. And now I only playing heading across there and I pinching myself because this little boy from Malabarima who watching VH1 and seen all these mega superstars on TV growing up. I gonna be on a show with these people. Boy, and I go on there, Curry, and I'm nervous. I'm normally not a nervous person, eh? Because I mean in entertainment or whatever, and I'm nervous. They had other fellas there on the boat too. And they the first episode filming, and they're asking us to go and introduce ourselves to the girls. And the three other fellas, three big hard back men, but you're gonna, you're gonna nobody want to go because everybody's nervous because remember, all of us grew up watching these people and putting them on a big one. So they're the three people from the Caribbean too, or just no, no. One of the guys is a celebrity chef from Atlanta, the other one is our celebrity bartender, and the other one, we were just um like somebody who's an entertainer in himself. But them nervous, them nervous, I'm one of us, I mean, and I'm from America. I from Trinidad, bro. Like, I'm not even I know nothing about this. I'm not expecting nothing like that. So I was first up and was nervous. If you hear me, if it watched the first episode of that, I have an accent. Yeah, I come over there like I guys, man, the accent dropped within 20 minutes. And I started be myself and I realized that the reason why they chose me for the show was they wanted an original, authentic Caribbean person with my attitude.

Corie: 59:01

Oh, I was gonna ask you why like they reach out to Jeffers on them. They they they were looking for somebody.

SPEAKER_00: 59:05

So, what they did in that show is that they basically Googled to see Carnival Concierge Services. And a partner of mine, and Jeffers, owned a Carnival Concierge Service at the time, and they reached out to him and he recommended a couple Trine men. Because they were looking for a male from Trinidad and Tobago who could have shown the girls around for Carnival, and that's how I got that recommendation. And that's how that played out.

Corie: 59:30

Yeah, when I look at it, it it it look well, it's hard to detect that you're nervous, but it really looked like you just being yourself there, which was blowing my mind a little bit because you was just like, Yeah, you these were carnivales, you show them how to wine and thing. I mean, it felt like a good representative of us in that in that space. In that moment, you have all this in mind, like you're representing Trendad and how Trendad will react, all them things you're feeling, or you're just yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 59:54

I I was very mindful of that. Very, very mindful of that because I remember the producers at the time. They had a uh uh itinerary for for them when they came to Trinidad of the things that they needed to do during the carnival week. And on the itinerary, they had well, they need to go and carry them to play cricket and they need to take them to a river line and need to take them to and I say in the middle of carnival, you want to carry people to play cricket and go river line? I say, Oh, they're mad on Trinidad to kill me. Yeah, nah. All they have to want to do span, all they have to do juve, all they have to play mass. These are the things we do during carnival, none of cricket and river, bruh. And Trinidad is going to crucify him. I have them missing carnival and whatever. And then I took them to Juve, one of the episodes, and I warned them. I say, hey, we go in Juve. Or they had to sleep, a small sleep, and get back up to hit Carnival on Monday. And one of the girls, she fighting up with her costume to put on, and them leave the boat till must be seven o'clock in the night, bro. Carnival Monday. They're done. And I fuming. And people thought it was acting, but I was pissed because you making me miss whole year. We waited for these two days. I miss a whole day because of you and you're shopping as a job costume. You can't get your act together because you wake up late when I tell you, yeah, Juve is a big one. Juve is as small as I realize it's foreigners and that. Man, I was really next to them. So that personality came out in the show, and that's why I became one of the more prominent figures on the show. Because really, I was supposed to be like a background character. Seriously. Yeah, and I kind of worked my way up just because of me being me and me being myself. So yeah, it was a good thing that I dropped the accent and whatever because I was more one of the front runners in the show in terms of yeah, because I surprised now you're telling me it's a three other people.

Corie: 1:01:36

So it seemed as the onlooker, right? It seemed as though they hire you specifically to do everything you do there. So it's surprising to hear there was four people because I don't remember seeing like they there was more you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:47

Yeah, I took I took more of the leadership role there because again, my personalities just started to shine over in it, and then they had the whole thing with chili and I on the boat, and yeah, yeah. So it's not a long story.

Corie: 1:01:59

I know you're getting. I don't care what the hell they say on that show. I know you're getting. I said, why did this man go there and he tried to get in with somebody? And I feel I feel it's chilly alone either. Look at that fans. I ain't going on now. You're actually for real. I just was me, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:14

I was just being me.

Corie: 1:02:16

So them kind of things, when you see them opportunities, you're going nervous for whatever it is, you're doing it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:21

I just doing it. I I am somebody who does like to live life with regrets. So I would just go and grab it. Whether I know how to do it or not, I'd say in yes first and I go learn after. So I did that. And after I did that VH1 show, I was signed to VH1 for four years. That contract was for four seasons, right? The show won a lot of awards and all of that. And then that was 2019, boom, 2020, COVID hit. Man, and I'm going into a rot.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:50

No, I see why you're gone so bad in that COVID press conference. He was angry for it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:56

Boy, I went into a rut. Yeah, boy. Because COVID came and hit now, and now left engine, or think back, right? And now left a thriving engineering career to come and do entertainment full-time. I given it two years full time. First year, I guess signed to VH1 and my career looking as with booming. And then second year, COVID come and hit, and I in a whole, the show got cancelled because it's a cruise. It can't have cruise during COVID. So I'm nothing. And I just there, I'm no work because now I'm not an engineer. Yeah, luckily. Entertainment shuttle. Yeah, entertainment shuttle. Luckily, I was on radio, so I was on boom champions at the time. I was on boom champions at the time. So at least I had and then they cut salaries, everybody get cut salaries. So my salary get cut, so I ain't making that much or money. Um I in trouble. I in trouble. So I then thinking, man, what I really good. I in a whole too. I'm not even trying to I don't have a creative zeal. I'm not trying to release no music. I'm not trying to do nothing. I just not in it, right? And then I started to do these little videos on social media. Um, because people who man, I started to do these little funny skits, and then these brands started to pick it up. So at the point in time, Digicell pick it up, and I started to do digicell videos for them, and then I started to do Pizza Hut. And then I started to do different brands hired me to do like these social media videos, right before all these that are created influencers or that thing. I started to do that, and brands started to latch on to it, and I started to make money off of that. So I say, Alright, I'm making another thing. Mevon come and hit me up. He said, Boy, let me do a song now. I say, boy, for what? If I do a parang now, we are going and perform it. It ain't going away. I can't make no money from it. I'm gonna invest in this thing and whatever. He said, Boy, but the people need it. He said, Because everybody in a dark space and Christmas coming, and that's supposed to be the bright smile they putting on their face, and they look into you to give them that because nobody is bringing out no new parang songs. Give me something now, boy. And I just dig deep and I pull from a life experience and I wrote the song Lila. Oh, that was a question. That was a real life story, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh I was in a relationship at the time, and I was in a way you call a COVID relationship. So, when COVID, you're spending plenty of time with the game. Yeah, you know if you like the person or not, nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I boy and had real love a funny girl too, yeah. Real love of a funny girl. But at the point in time, I find like one on one I'm making two boys. Certain things she saying and certain things she doing, just not adding up. And at night we lie down there, we sleeping, and the girl's phone ring, and she walks outside to answer the call, and she there for a long time. Bubbling. And then she comes, and I but the midday about two o'clock in the morning, this girl's phone ring, and you go outside and you come back to give me some Nancy story about who it really was. And I say, Nah, you feel I noticed.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:59

So she knows you're so chili up.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:04

So that sparked me writing his song Lila. So there's a line in his song you hear two o'clock in the morning, the girl phone starts to ring. She jumped out of bed, walk outside. If you see she's smiling, and then it you know, she tells me that it was KFC who called her, and that then it was them womaners lie ly. And that's what I wrote that song. And um she knows this is about shit. I don't know if she knows it was about her, I don't know, but I wrote this song about her, and then I say, but this song need a female answer back to it because I say them womaners lie, but men lie too. So I need a woman to sing that part, and at the point in time, I saying, who is the female I could get to sing this boy? And the only person coming to my mind is Destra. But at the time, I don't know Destra. So I tell him Mevon, boy, let me get Destra to sing it. Now he said, Cool, do you know Destra? Mevon is not a big producer at that time neither. He didn't do party and thing yet. So he saying, But he don't know Destra. I don't know Destra. I talked to my same manager, Jeffers. Jeff was say, boy, use Rome boy. Message Destra. I go and get Destra number for you. Message Destro, call Destra and ask her to come on the track with you. So I too son I pick up the phone and I say, Hi, Miss Destra. Um this is this is um Rome, and let's do a little parang, and I'll just sing so and I let's do a little hosting and thing. She says, Rome, of course I know who you are. And then I again I doubt it myself too because I see in Destra as the Destroy. Yeah, it is Destroy Man, and I ask her, I say, I want you to sing a parang with me. She says, Parang boy. I never do parang before, you know. But she never does no, she never did parang before. She said, I never did parang before. And I parang is not really my thing, boy. Nah, boy. I ain't think I think I'll pass on this one. I said, Destroy here. What to do? I send in a song, play it right before you go and sleep. And right before you go to bed, I wear your pass shack shack under your pillow and sleep on it. Seriously, she bust out laughing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:19

Rome says, once again, don't say no for long, you know. Yeah, there's a climate time. I said, do that. She loves it. She's super like marijuana.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:32

So she laughed and whatever. Man and the next day, Destro say, Rome, I like this song, boy. She said, You know, my family kind of into parang, and I grew up listening to Parang and that kind of thing, you know. I will do it with you. And that was it. We went by her studio and we recorded that part, and the song became one of my biggest hits up to this day. And it was something I didn't want to do in COVID.

Corie: 1:08:55

Oh, yeah, I guess well, you know, my vote, my vone call yeah, and so too. Yeah, but it's an iconic song because I have a like in Kaiso music, right? You see, Tune About Lie, it has some of the greatest songs. Terra have one about them women could lie, Lord Nelson King Lia, Bungie the one with singing Sandrum. That song Lai Lie, even though it's a parang, it it ride with all the rest of them lie song all over the years. You know, it's uh congrats on it. Is it really uh yeah, it's well crafted. I don't know where you come up with the idea to put a woman on it. Because I think it would've been great regardless, but the fact that it has an answer back, yeah, make it something where we go in a little Christmas line from your kind of wedding to my kind of wedding. Any Christmas kind of house you go in, you're hearing that song bubbling all the time. But people like it, and it really wasn't nothing to do with Christmas.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:43

So people were thinking about it.

Corie: 1:09:44

It's just the energy of the song, yeah. The energy, I guess, is a Christmas rhythm, if you want to call it that the beat, but it didn't say nothing about Christmas.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:51

But I in all the parang songs you would see I would write elements about a training Christmas in it. So you would hear in Destra's verse that I wrote for her, is that it was instead of I saying two o'clock in the morning, the girl phones at a ring. In her verse, it says two o'clock in the morning, he comes home from paranging. He's smelling a rum with your hand on your neck, what it is he's hiding.

Corie: 1:10:09

Yeah, so it was mixed in, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:12

I would put in the elements of Christmas in it, but not really a Christmas song.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:16

Yeah, um, it's 22 that had a caller response.

Corie: 1:10:22

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also something you don't see a whole lot in soccer parang.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:28

Like the couple of them, they have a couple of them one more, yeah.

Corie: 1:10:32

Especially that combination energy, you don't see a whole lot of it, especially, but I guess while the outsider watching it as roman destroy, it's not like if we're watching the way you might see it, because by the time they say it's like Roman destroy connect. Because I think you cement yourself as that guy in soccer parang. I want to say king, but that frightened me because I don't know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:55

So people call me the princess soccer paranormal. People say so. I accept it. I do accept it because I know that I would consider Levi City Baron, his grunt, uh the crazies, those are the kings of the course, yeah.

Corie: 1:11:06

And some of the men who was there at the beginning, so they would they were there very early. Like when I heard Calypso, the early ones, Melody Kitchener, when they talk about the origin of Christmas calypsos before it was so parent, what they say was really it was a marketing thing. So what they say is they have a record, right? And you have a space on the back of the record, you have a side B. So what they used to do is put the music that they want for carnival on this side, but they used to put a Christmas song on the LP so that DJs go start playing it early. Because if it's a Christmas song, like when when he said drink a ramana punch a creamer, you're gonna play that Christmas time. Right. But on the flip side of that, he have what you really want to push for the carnival. So it's done in the DJ hand from November, September. So it's really how how they how they get in. But Crazy Credited as one of the well, the first one really with within.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:50

Yeah, yeah, he would have he would have started it. So when I now did the parang thing started to blow up, right? And it overshadowed my soccer career. So what people didn't realize is that I actually have way more soccer songs than I have so parang songs. No, yeah, up to this day. So, but the parang started to take off, and then people started to see me as the parang man, right? And I owned it. So I was there Christmas time and I performing everywhere with that parang thing. And then I started to realize that I have a responsibility because you have the legends in Sukha Parang who are up there, but there's a huge age gap right between them and me. And they didn't have much people at the point in time that were doing new Sukha Parang songs. So I knew every year I had to come out with a new song to keep this thing going because the next generation has to have something to latch on to, otherwise, the suka parang will die out when these legends go. And who gonna take on that? It had to be me. I can't look at anybody else. So I started to encourage other people to get involved in the sukkah parang thing. And then I was like, let me see if I can get some of these so artists involved in it and start singing. So some of them started singing, and then I had a collab with um Nyla last year as well, which was a great song, and it still is a great song now. And at a point in time, too, I said we need to create an event because I have enough songs I can put on my own show. So I started doing an event called Ham and Jam, and my management came to that and they say this is a good concept, you know. But this ham and jam thing, yeah, the same working boy, and how I'd come up with it was I'd really just create the event because I needed people to come out as extras in the music video for Annie. When I bring out the song Annie, I say, but I want a music video where I could show a whole parang side playing and people liming and dancing and where about how I'll do that. Let me throw a parang event. I did it in my aunt's backyard in arema and let me invite people, let them come and have a fun time, and we just film all of them and we use that as the the video, music video, and that worked. And I was like, but this thing worked next year. We did it again. Then my management perception came and they say, Boy, now make this thing parang with room, and then we move it from arema and we took it to Woodford um cafe and sugar on us. Man, and the place ram out, ram out, and so it was missing from these space, right? Yeah, yeah. So I said, but wait now, people actually will come to my own show. We are doing how to be singing other people's songs and just my songs alone. Headline is your name too. Man, and we ram out Woodford Cafe. Next year was COVID. So we could, yeah, boy.

Corie: 1:14:29

So your first paranguard room was was just 2019.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:33

Oh shit. First paranga room was 2019, then COVID hit. And then everybody was like, Well, at that COVID, you couldn't have nothing. So was it 2021? I think it was where they kind of open things up a bit and they allow you to have like concerts or whatever. And at that time, I say, boy fellas, we still do parang with room, but this time we're just doing it as a concert itself, a seated concert. And we went Naparima Bowl and we did it, and it was a hit. It it was we we videotaped it, we televised it on TV, and people loved that version where they could sit and enjoy the show, and it was a spectacle. And that just again grew to what it is now. And in my mind, the vision was I wanted to have the Marshall Monday of Parang. I see. I always look up to Marshall Montano in terms of his concert and him as an artist and he being the king of soaker, that I wanted to emulate that in so parang. So I started to fuse the traditional parang with the soap parang and the soaker. Because remember, I still have my soaker career as well. So you would see the structure of a parang with Rome Show is that you would have the live parang band. So they say we have Los Alumnos, the San One, and then you would see um I would come out live with a band. Karma is my backing band. Thanks to have we be he allow me to use karma, and I would infuse with that like some of the traditional parang players, like I would have La Mancio, and I would have some of the other parang sides come in and fuse with the band itself. And I would perform a set and I would bring in some of the legends. So one year had Skrunter, I would have Baron, I'd have Marseille Miranda this year, we have Crazy, we have Massey, we got Eddie Charles as well, and then we have the soca element of it now. So in the soca element, I would start to sing some of my soccer songs, and then I would bring Nyla as well, who I had the song with the parang. Nyla is coming this year to sing, and then Alison Hines, she always wanted to come and be a part of Parang with Drome. So Alison called and say she wants to be a part of it. David Willing that though, yeah, they have to come December the 20th, Friday. I mean, um, Saturday. Beautiful, you know. Saturday, December the 20th. Yeah, Saturday coming. So y'all coming down to an epic show. Yeah, epic epic. We do it at Sipriani College in Val Sean, and it's have thousands of people, but it's a nice mixed crowd, too. Some people bring their parents, yeah, they have young, young people in their 20s, too.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:52

That's why they sit down. Think that's work.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:54

Right.

Corie: 1:16:56

Like me, so right now I need to sit down here.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:00

Some of them come with a chair and sit down and watch it. But then the older people they party because it's like a fet. It's a food give you. It's like a festival, people saying, you know. Yeah, and then we have a Christmas food village where you have all the Christmas, trinity Christmas foods with the pastel and the hops and ham and all of that. That you eat your belly full and then you come and you party.

Corie: 1:17:19

Yeah, salute and I never really thought of it as that Marshall Monday of Christmas time. But it makes sense and the space missing it because um I found that there was just how you say there was a real big gap, right? Salute to the Parang Association. You remember you mentioned like Alyssian Day. There's a lot of work that she would have done as president of the Parang Association where now we're starting to see and party vents is crazy again. But let me talk about that gap for a minute, right? Because I would have seen where, as you say, the crazy scrunter baron, Marcy Miranda, the songs, the music are no old, it are no whole in music, right? But the truth is, I think you're right. Younger people, I don't know if they have the same emotion about some of the songs that the barons and the scrunters and and so on sing. And I don't know if it will happen after we're gone, unless there's something like a it's like a relay. If somebody else is not doing it now, it makes it difficult for even younger DJs or younger performers to say, all right, well, I'm gonna perform a room, but let me see who scrunter is and pick up some of those things too. So deliberate for you in terms of how you're approaching that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:20

Yeah, and and I also think I have the duty now to to bridge that gap. And something I'm gonna do in the next coming year is to try to get the DJs to start to play some of the newer soak up around songs. So I see somebody make a post here, they're complaining that it doesn't know. Yeah, somebody complain about it. And people tag me in it. Of course. And my response to it was there are within the past 10 years, there are so many new soapparang songs and artists, however, the DJs not playing it. And um, it's something that I would ask the DJs to do a little bit of research on. I have asked DJs, I say, why are they keep playing the same old so now? Again, all respect to the kings and the queen of soccer parang, right? But we grew up on that music, Corey, and that is why it inbreded in us, right? So we will hear the barani scrunt of the master, the Kenny J or whatever. We hear, but as the man said in his video, yeah, yeah, not for 30 something years. We had to give these youths something to grow up on too. Yeah, you had to give the youths something new for them to grow up. That'll be their generation. Back then was our generation. So what I see every single December, I see it. These DJs pull for the exact same songs because how radio, because remember that radio station, right? So and on radio. So you have every most of the the urban stations, they have a feature, a soaker parang or a parang feature, but in the urban format, because of sponsors will want to sponsor something Christmas like. And every time you give them a 10 minutes to play parang, they immediately go and play back the same songs that they are custom playing for the past few years.

Corie: 1:19:52

Black King and Sorrel.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:53

That's always all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time. And to me, it is my opinion. The problem with that is. A couple things. One is that the soccer parang artists are not in the system where they know the email addresses to send out their songs, right? So you would hear DJ saying, Well, I don't even know the new Soka Parang because I don't get no email blast with it, right? So in terms of distribution of music, an artist would usually have a DJ blast and he would send it out to them. Now there are people who have DJ Blast that you could pay them to blast out the music. So there's Lee, there's um Julian's promos, there's Redim Stream, and they have the email address database of most of the big DJs. So that's how you usually get it out. A lot of these soccer parang artists not know this. They don't even know who these people are and how to get out.

Corie: 1:20:42

Eddie was talking about that. He says it's so separate, he says at different levels of competitiveness and all that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:46

So it's at different worlds, so they don't know that. So they don't know how to distribute the music to these DJs to get it to them for them to play it. But however, if I am a DJ and I now tell you as a petrotron engineer, I used to sit on my computer, go on Julia and promos, or go on the internet and do it. And if I'm a DJ and I love my craft and I want to play new soccer param music, I will find it. I will go on YouTube. I could go right now on my phone and type in soccer param 2025 and all will come up. And these agents wouldn't admit it. But what they do, they rip the songs from YouTube and they play it. Because sometimes if they won the song and they didn't get it in our blast, they rip it. So they can more than rip it if all they really want to do it. So I feel as though a part of it is them not really care, they don't really care about the soccer parang genre enough to go and do research to find the new songs and find the good songs. I'm passionate about it, so that's why I would do it. So I think it's on me, I taking that mantle to try and get the new songs to them by using my platform to showcase some of the other art. Not even mine. I have probably I have over 10 soccer parang songs, and people only run to the Annie, the Lila Lai, I guess. But and I actually have more non-double meaning songs than double meaning songs. People do even know that.

Corie: 1:22:03

Yeah, well, let me talk about that and I can play for room for years. I parang in house to house, right? And um house to house parang. I don't know if you do a lot of that in any time. Like you speak up on somebody. Yeah. The tradition of that is um it's it's special. Because like um, I remember the last time I uh after the say I say I'd done, right? I ain't going to look at the back of Blue Basin boy. We start from Cameron up on the hill. Come down on the side. We're going up um all through Digo, because we the way we will start then is like Christmas Eve night. You might you might reach by a man, kind men side assemble all six, seven o'clock. But you can't come down in the fancy people's house. You can't go St. James and Woodbrook and dig one thing yet, right? Because them are cutting and them, right? So you staying up in parman or in Cameron and them people house ready for you to come and parang. Right. So overnight we parang in house to house, up in the hill. And it's when dawn breaks now, you will start to go in people's house. Now, I as a younger fella among them fellas in the soccer parang, or in in in the parang house house thing then. My thing always used to be I doing what you're doing. I love to go by people's robe and play a new tune with them youths listening to now. Right. So we go play all the scrunch, so we will play the thing, we'll play the traditional parang and sereno and thing. But I wait until to hear them something from this year. So when I think and I'm a father and all we playing together, and they say, boy, bring out the poor nanny. I say cool. That's saying, boy, cool. And I'm a father vexing them. Man used to be mad because we pick up a man a year, right? The man, the man tune good to tell you the truth. And he has a real vibe as a performer. You meet some men who them are tune was 15 years old and they're still pushing it. But you have a tune named Cat and Bagboy. You know, and that man going my father grinding because in people's house Christmas morning. People now say their prayers. You come in at Cat and Bag and the punchline, and his song was a long-teeth pussy swimming like me. And you know, the man have one long tooth coming on the bottom, so you showing that tooth when he said, Yeah, every house we go in, people love the song. They say, Sing it again, sing it. And we study my father particularly studying by the respect for the people home and thing because of what Christmas comes from. So, boy, but they draw the line by anybody. They say, na na na na na you cannot sing that when you cover that. So even anything about it is like I was talking to Mevon Bodis. And Mevon, the point was made with Mevon, to be honest. Mevon said, but a warmer brush. We we grew up singing that, not knowing really what it is. Or even um Keeggs, when he was here, say, What was Kenny's song by um come on? No, not that one. That was that was a little more obvious, but it was one with something with coming. Uh he had um something about he going to come or come by me for Christmas, or something to do with coming. Right, right. And until he said that here, I said, Shit, that what you mean? Are you really thinking about it like that? Right. So when Mevon put it together that listen, that thing is it's not even people not thinking of it like that. You know, I was real surprising for me. When I asked Mevon about it, Mevon says, Boy, people don't say Punanians, you know. You say nobody don't know that the way you feel they know it at all. And then I put the clip out and in the comments on TikTok, people is like, that's what it is. I never know. So you usually get a response.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:20

My mother sang that song for two years, not knowing what the song was singing. You put money in now, you should have tell the woman, a good Catholic woman.

Corie: 1:25:27

You leave the woman to sing it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:30

She thought that was a nice wholesome song about porn. That's what she thought the song was about. But that that the way how I write music, and so a lot of people bring music to me now because they think I am the double meaning man. For Christmas time, the slackest at a tune, people send it to me because I think that is my style, right? Not knowing that my style is not really that you know. My style, since I was a child, I love creative writing. So I used to mash up essays, right? I love creative writing, and my style is very unique. And it's something I learned from Kenny J as well, is where I sing clean songs for dirty minds. So every song I sing, it has to be where a child could hear the song and not know what an adult is thinking. Right, yeah. So if you listen to Annie, the name of the song is Annie, right? And it's about Poon. The whole song is about Porn. Yeah, the song doesn't allude to sex at all or nothing else but porn. Yeah. So if you listen to Lovable, it says the girl, she's huggable, she kissable, and she lovable.

Corie: 1:26:40

So I like Agilu lovable.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:43

We all love Agilu lovable, right? So is is is crafting it in a way where the youths could listen to it, and only if they have an adult mind they can catch the second meaning of the song. Right. And I feel like a lot of the music kind of very direct. So when people try to write a song for me, they're coming out too direct.

Corie: 1:27:08

Oh, you used to use the direction. Yeah, and I'd be like, nah, nah, nah, nah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:10

That's too direct. That they had to curve it so that it's not. I had one very, very direct song called Apu. Right, yeah, and the radio stations kind of push back on it. That was the only song that got banned from radio. Oh, they banned it?

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:23

Yeah, yeah.

Corie: 1:27:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the truth is, like, um, let me use uh no Kenny J used to do what he does. Um Crazy had some of it too. Because I mean, even when you know, we listen to songs along like Drive It, come crazy, drive it. People in them time, they know they haven't.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:40

Crazy are cocky as well. Crazy was wild, while at a point.

Corie: 1:27:44

All those things. I think he was writing songs to get banned. Because the truth is, when you when they banned this song like Pelamas here talking about Soka Baptist being banned, I might have propelled it to win the road match. Right. And then Impulse is another one who writes in a way where same thing. They have that double entendre thing. And and but I feel as though the Christmas, when you look at it, as you say, the gap was getting bigger and bigger. If nobody stepped in his space, we'd still be listening to them things. But the truth is that double entendre thing is part of who we are as a society, as a people. Even the way we walk and we talk, and we always have a hidden meaning and something or a sarcastic.

SPEAKER_00: 1:28:18

But that's that is what brought the youth to back to soap parang and people now seeing that. So as much as you all thought Romans being smutty and are singing these double meaning songs, the generation that I was in at that point in time, when I started singing those songs, is now they started listening to Sukha Param because it catched them with something. So I use that to open the door for them to listen to the other type of music that I have because that were they latch on too. When I sing Ponani, anybody who from in the 90s 2000s listening to dancehall music, you know what Ponani is. Yeah, but my parents didn't know because they didn't grow up on dancehall music. So people thinking everybody knows what is Ponani. But it's dirty, yeah. You have to be in that era of dancehall music to know what that is. That's a Jamaican slang, that's not a Trini slang. We don't say that. So the the youths who grew up as millennials knew what that was and they latched onto that, and that's why that song really blew up. Yeah, and then when I sang Apu, it was just very funny. This man from India named Apu, and I tell him we are the best Christmas in the world, so I want Apu C. Because he didn't want to hear, he wanted to see. So I take him to Arima. I want Apusi. Yeah, people found that was hilarious. That you wouldn't see that on um, no, it was bad.

Corie: 1:29:31

We write it clever, but people, that one, people seen it as obvious, like the audience. Or you still have the radio, the radio found it was very obvious because they're saying well, the radio is our age, but when you put it out, like for instance, our parents they're hearing it and saying we again push back for that outside of radio.

SPEAKER_00: 1:29:47

No, everyone everywhere I go to perform, I have to sing that song. People love to hear that song now. Because I go to corporate gigs, you have some corporate companies who are very conservative, and I will not sing it. Okay, but I have a radio edit for the song where I say I want him to see, I see, and that one plays. Yeah, but it's kind of take the sting out of the song itself. So it doesn't give me the same. But I know how to tailor. I have two sets. I have a corporate set and I have a party set. So you would see me perform for banks, and some of the songs I would sing at a bank, I would not sing. I mean, sorry, the other way around. Some of the songs I would sing in a cool off fit, I wouldn't sing in a bank event because I have to tailor my performance to suit somebody. And he had to play anyway. And he would play in anyway. I could perform in church and I would sing, and people want to hear that, and they they accept that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have my my parents still involved every needs church, Malabar C is our home church, and they would have their women's ministry, and they would have a parang every year, and I would go there and perform for them, and they love it. And again, I just know which songs I could sing there. I have a lot of non-double meaning songs that I sing, but Annie is something that people accept. True. The only church accepts it. That's a song about Porn.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:54

It's what your mind thinking.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30:55

Yeah, I know what my mind takes.

Corie: 1:30:58

So Mevold, when he came, say the concept was thing, it was bubbling, and he said, Boy, Rome, come back and say, I cannot sing that, I can't sing that, your parents and them kind of thing. What happened? What flip it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:31:10

I I I again I come from a real church background, and my mother, she's somebody who will feel shame because of she involved in the church. That's what people will say about her and her son and this kind of songs that he's singing and that kind of thing. So I was always mindful of whatever I do affects my parents. They're still alive, thankfully. So I always know in the back of my mind. But when I heard Mevon's mother, she heard the song and she loved it, and she a more mature lady, obviously, and she didn't find it was raw or raunchy or anything like that. Then I said, Boy, let me go with it. And that became probably my biggest song up till today. Is that that was it? And I didn't even know the power of the song until I went to Arima Village Room to perform. And I remember Dr. Ross from Five City 105, he was there, and he was telling me, he said, Boy, that porn song yeah, bigger. And I say, I didn't really take it on. And he introduced me, and I decided to walk out and sing the song Acapella. And I just say, from the bottom of my heart, your ponies are welcome. So just bring out the porn who play like you're smart. And when I stop at that point, I put the mic to the crowd, and the whole place ball, I come for the pony. And at that point in time, I realized, hey, I have something here.

Corie: 1:32:24

Yeah, the reaction bigger than it. Yeah, yeah. That's that's all right. It really, it really hit. Yeah. Now you brought up Marshall Montana, right? Something he always says that stands out to me is he I think if he was in an interview and somebody asks him a question, and he says, Boy, it's like a video game, you know. He says, when you reach the top of this level and you're going to the next level, you're coming out at the bottom of that level. You come to mind when it comes to that. Because having accomplished all this, you have sung now the whole place singing. What the hell you went LA for to go to school, boy? What that comes in? What you were in acting school? What was it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:32:57

So that's me always looking for the next challenge, right? So I left engineering to be an entertainer, and I told myself, if I'm going to be an entertainer, I have to give it a hundred percent and see my fullest potential. At the point in time, that was last year, the beginning of last year, I started to look at my career, and I was at the top of the game in most of the things that I touched. So I was one of the top soccer parang artists. At the point in time I was on Boom Champions, we had one of the top morning shows in the country. I was one of the top um hosts. I hosted everything from Miss Universe, Miss World, stuff for the president, the prime minister. There wasn't anything I haven't hosted in the corporate world or in any fets. I used to host the IC Fet, I host Army Fet, I host you name it, I have hosted it before. I've been on those huge stages. And I look at my career and I was like, what's next for me? Where do I go? Because I in my mind I kind of hitting a glass ceiling.

Corie: 1:34:02

I call it retirement, but you also call it something else.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:06

I want to go further than this here. I can't just be stuck in Trinidad and I just doing this alone. And I had a meeting with my management team, and they were totally against it. They were like, why? They say, but you're you're Jordan and you're gonna play baseball. Yeah, you're moving like Jordan because you're at the top of your basketball and you want to go and play baseball, which you don't know nothing about, and you who know if you've even been good at that. Of course. And then you want to go and play golf, like you're confused. Stay at what you're good at and just keep being at the top there, and and don't do anything else.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:39

That was the advice, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:41

And again, I just I wasn't settled, boy. I wasn't happy at the point in time, and I felt I needed to do something more. At the point in time, also I was producing Carnival Catwalk, which we are touch on that a bit.

Corie: 1:34:53

Probably in your 15 minutes again, eh, David? Just in case. Yeah. You're running all over, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:34:57

Yeah, um, so I said I want to be an actor. I always loved performing, and I always look up to like Will Smith in terms of how his career unfolded, where he would have been doing music, but then he did acting as well, too. And I said, man, I don't know what my potential is like in that arena. But I'm a real student, right? Again, I guess from the engineering background. So I want to learn this craft before I get into it. So I started doing a lot of research on the internet and deciding where to go because I know Tyler Perry had his studios in Atlanta, so it was either Atlanta, New York, or LA. And then the research I did pointed me towards LA as to the best acting schools in the world, basically. So I say, man, I'm gonna take a leap of faith and I'm going out there for six months and I go into school to learn this craft. Man, I went across the curry and it was a real eye-opening experience because I live in Trinidad and Tobago, leaving everything that I have here, my whole career, putting it on home. My name everything to risk going out there. And when I go out there now, I compete with everybody who is the top of their country or their city. Because LA now is the hub of Hollywood, right? Everybody comes in. So I'm meeting people who are big stars in India and wherever and Europe and whatever, they come in now LA and I had to compete against them. It's not like I just with my people alone, right? Man, and I just dived into it headfirst and started learning the craft, and I fell in love with the craft in terms of being an actor and getting to tap into that side of things and tapping into emotions and bringing it out. And it was such an amazing experience for me, but it was very, very difficult because I scrunting us. I remember you saying every day, I used to show you every day, every morning. I live here where I have a nice house in a nice neighborhood, I drive in a nice car, and I go across there and I'm broken because I own my savings and is US dollars I dealing with. I have no source of income coming in because I own a student visa across there, so I cannot even work. So I just had to be paying school fees, paying rent, paying for food, a little bit of entertainment.

Corie: 1:37:10

And L ain't not cheap.

SPEAKER_00: 1:37:12

It's not cheap, it's one of the most expensive cities in the world. You want to go on a little date with our girl? It's$20 for one drink, and you say I'd buy for you and her, and she ain't drinking one. So you your bill, it's it was I was spending between$8,000 and$10,000 US dollars a month. Wow. Yeah, to live and school fees. And then I was like, wait, boy, this thing is hard out here, and it's really, really difficult to even break through in that market to get an agent, to get a manager, whatever. And then coming out to the end of my school term, because I went to Lee Strasberg Institute, which is one of the biggest um schools there. I went to um Margie Haber, which is another big school there. I went to Stella Adler. So three different schools I went to, and I learned the craft and I did improv classes and all of that. So I had a good foundation. So then I was like, okay, I'm ready to start working as an actor to start going on auditions and getting jobs. Then I got hit with reality is that I needed a work permit to be an actor. Now I have a work permit to be a singer. Oh, it's two different things, and it was two different things, which I didn't know that beforehand. So I go on out there to be an actor to go and start to go on auditions. I can't even get one audition because I do have a work permit to be an actor, and it has so many people out there auditioning for these roles, they're not looking to get another hurdle. So they're going to take the people who have all the documentation intact. So I know how to find an attorney in the US who could do this US work permit for me to do that. Man, it's so expensive, too. And then it's taking time, it's taking months for you to get this work permit to be an actor. I say, let me bring my little red tail back home, eh? Because money running out of here. And money waiting for you here. And and I could make money back home here. Right. And it was planned that the semester would have ended in September, and I would have come back in October, prep for my soccer season, prep for my soccer parang season, prep for parang room, and make that money there when I came back home. So I came back home, and luckily enough, I could have caught myself making money in the parang season to kind of build back up to pay for the work permit, and I finally got the work permit. So now I only got it probably in June this year. So I now have the work permit to be an actor. So now I could go back out and still I will still pursue it. But now the the industry has changed in LA. But you don't have to physically be there anymore to go on auditions. A lot of it is self tapes. So I could tape from here in Trinidad and Tobago, submit auditions, and then I could get there.

Corie: 1:39:50

You'd rather leave them till you have a gig then.

SPEAKER_00: 1:39:51

Yeah, I'd rather leave them until I get a gig. So now I don't want to go across there and fight up to do that anymore. Unless I get a job there and I choose to do that. Um, but when I keep Mark Homer as well, then I got the opportunity to do Ultimate Soccer Champion. Right.

Corie: 1:40:04

Ultimate soccer champion came before Carnival Catwalk. No. Carnival Catwalk was before. That was before you left for LA.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:09

Before. So I produced Carnival Catwalk in 2023. I see. Before I went to LA, but it only aired in 2025. I understand.

Corie: 1:40:17

So when we've seen that, we've seen you over there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:19

Yeah. And when I went there in LA, a part of that journey was also meeting people to find a distribution company and to get a US platform within which to air Carnival Catwalk. So Carnival Catwalk, I don't think people understand the magnitude of what that show is and what it has done for Trinidad and Tobago. That is the very first TV show of its kind from the Caribbean, made by Caribbean people from Trinidad and Tobago, that has landed on a US streaming platform of that magnitude. So it was something big for TV and film here in not only in TNT, but in the Caribbean, it was the number one show in its time slot locally, um regionally, and now it's on NBC's peacock, which is a big thing.

Corie: 1:40:58

So how did how it started? Was it your idea or you had people you were working with?

SPEAKER_00: 1:41:03

Yeah, so because I was on the VH1 show and then it got cancelled in COVID. In my mind, I was like, wait, boy, how I doing this again? I get a taste of international television, but how I put myself back on TV? And I was like, boy, what about I create my own TV show? And I was like, alright. But not only me, I find I see Hollywood films, I see in Bollywood films from India, I see in Nollywood films from Africa, I see in Asian films like Squid Games and things. But how come we do another TV shows from the Caribbean, boy, with Caribbean people? So I was like, instead of me trying to put myself on TV, what about I put a whole Caribbean show on TV and feature Caribbean people and training people in for that matter? And that's how I came up. And I was like, all right, what the world knows Trinidad and Tobago for? Carnival. But I can't just make a carnival show. I was like, I need to make it palatable enough where they could understand our culture with something that they already know, and as like fashion. A big part of Carnival is the fashion in terms of the costumes and things. So then I fuse the fashion with the TV and Carnival, and we got Carnival Catwalk. Yeah, so that's how that show came about.

Corie: 1:42:17

Interesting concept because it was one of my selfish requests when I see you going and do the film or the acting, right? Because just so you're saying there's a huge gap in soccer parang, there's a huge gap in TV too. That was not always the case. At other time, we used a real TV show. All kinds of show. Yeah, we're doing things all the time. And uh there was a little bit of a stretch where you're not seeing as much of it. And it's not that we short at actors or talents or any of those things. And it's so funny when you say kind of a catwalk and the fashion thing because it's flashing back to early in the interview. When I do I want to be Calypsonian or soaker, I want to sow the thing, I want to get it. Yeah, so success in your mind is it you're happy with where it landed, or maybe I should ask you before what management telling you when you're coming this way because that must be stressed out when they deal with you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42:59

I am I am perception management's most difficult client to deal with. They manage Allison Ice, they used to manage Iwa Josh, Nati and Tanda, they manage Nicolas Puran, now they manage Nicholas Paul. And out of all those people they manage, I am their most difficult.

Corie: 1:43:14

Yeah, when the phone ring and the CS Robert must be like, what now?

SPEAKER_00: 1:43:16

Yeah, what this man coming with next, because it's always something else I go in to try to achieve. And I don't stop until I hit that goal. So I would pray every morning for Carnival Catwalk to be a huge international success. And I would do these kind of what do you say, manifestations where you just recite these things as tell myself affirmations. Every day I would say these affirmations to myself, and I would say Carnival Catwalk will be a huge international success. I would say ultimate soccer champion will be a huge success. And I would tell myself these things over and over and over for years, and that's how it manifested into that, along with a lot of prey and a lot of people, SGP Productions and Gianfranco, who would have come with me at Carnival Catwalk to make that a success. So Carnival Catwalk now is on NBC's Peacock, and then I went to France because there's a conference called Mipcom where all of the big TV buyers and TV stations and networks come to buy content and sell content and trade content. And I went there and they were blown away by Carnival Catwalk, which was mind-blowing to me. That this little show from the Caribbean from Trinidad and Tobago in front of all of these thousands of shows that they have and they want ours. So we just signed a deal with a UK distribution company to distribute Carnival Catwalk outside of the US to the rest of the world. Congrats! So that's great. Not only big for Carnival Catwalk and for me and for my team, but for the whole TV and film industry in Trinidad and Tobago that we could open these doors for them and now bring other productions to these people. Because we have I have sat in meetings with Netflix, with Amazon, with Hulu, with NBC, and I in these meetings like way boy, this little boy from Malabar, Trinidad and Tobago in these meetings.

Corie: 1:44:53

That's all we need in a room. We need more little boys from Malabar to dream them kind of dreams. That's all we need in the room. The countries are different places.

SPEAKER_00: 1:45:00

You just had to be a big dreamer. So then when I was in LA, I always wanted to do a talent show, a singing competition, something. I always like watching party time and party flavor and Digicel Rising Star and all of those things I liked. And then I said, Boy, I want to go America's Got Talent and see how they just do it. And I bongs up a Trini up there, and she says, Hey, I just go America's Got Talent only time. I know the people come there. We go. Random is my part, my one of my managers, his aunt or his cousin or something. And she reached out because she sees another Trini up there and she knows who I am. And man, Cory, I go on there. This woman introduces me to Simon Cowell, who is America's Got Talent. And Simon Cowell is like, yeah, come on, come, come and sit here. I sit in behind Simon Cowell next to his girlfriend and his son. And we the N VIP zone. And I am getting to see everything. And I am there with my little phone taking notes. And I see is have a camera there. There's a camera. This backstage, they had the movers. And I say, I'm gonna bring this to Trinidad and Tobago because I used to grow up loving soccer monarch. I make two soccer monarch finals and I love the soccer monarch product. Oh, so you have soccer monarch in mind when you're thinking about it. In my mind, I think, man, this could be I could make soccer monarch into this. Boom, shut while I in LA, the government puts out requests for proposals for a new soccer competition. So I say, Well, they my opportunity, yeah. So I call my business partners who I did carnival cat walk with, and we put together a proposal to say we're going to take over what soccer monarch was and bring a new um soccer competition show like no other one that can be televised. Because a problem I used to have with watching the past competition was something it was too long to watch on TV as a TV product. So I hosted Soka Monarch before. So I I know I remember hosting a soccer monarch a year, and we reached there must be eight o'clock, and not till four o'clock in the morning. We still there, I fall and sleep in the room.

Corie: 1:46:59

Yeah, my age they had to wake up and see who win. You couldn't stay up there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:47:02

So I say, Yeah, what this needs it needs to be a properly packaged edited product for television, and we're gonna make backstories of the different contestants. And another thing I saw was missing, I loved Synergy Soka Star. And I say, Boy, that's missing because that bust so many artists that we know now: the pre D, the second star, the voice, Trinidad Killer, all of them came from Soka Star. So I say, we're missing that avenue for the young people to get a breakthrough into the soccer arena because so is kind of people that say the old man genre because a lot of the artists who get a big break, they break in their 30s and 40s, while other genres around the world, people coming out in their teens and early 20s, and we missing that pipeline for the youths to get our opportunity. So I was like, Ultimate soccer champion could be it. We pitched to the government at the point in time, they loved the idea, they saw the work that we did with Carnival Catwalk, so they knew that we were capable of doing it, and they agreed. So we got the contract to do Ultimate Soker Champion, and we only got that Cory, which people didn't know. We only got to go ahead for that in the second week of January 2025, you know. Oh wow, bro. I and what second week of January 2025, Corey, we get the green light to produce Ultimate Soker Champion. Carnival is in what four weeks, yeah.

Corie: 1:48:22

Jesus.

SPEAKER_00: 1:48:22

So in in a month and a half, we produce that entire production. And the only reason we were able to do it in such a short space of time was a team. We had Lullaby, who was lights band, who knows everything about production and printing and decor decoration. We had Adrian Chandler who does think and dirty and all that in terms of event management, and then we had SGP Productions, who did Carnival Catwork on the TB side. So we just mashed gas one time and we were able to do it. I wrote the rules ultimately took a champion in a night. I said on so because I, as a government, give me it. Good time, yeah. Four days later, I have in the press conference to announce the competition. And one week after the press conference announced, it's auditions. One week after auditions, it's semi-finals. One week after semifinals, it's finals. And so we go in. And I plan in this whole thing week by week as we go along. People not seeing that. No, of course it wasn't. Yeah, it was.

Corie: 1:49:17

We produced this thing. People as vaccinated saying Rome get through this thing, Rome is a get through champion of the world.

SPEAKER_00: 1:49:22

People thought so. People I hear all kind of things, Rome is a PM, he did see yeah. And I'm like, bro, no, no. I produced carnival cat work with our team. People saw the kind of quality work we did. People see the passion that I have for culture, and that is why they would say, these are the people who are capable enough to pull this thing off. And they were right. Because we did pull it off, and the thing was successful.

Corie: 1:49:44

Well, I hear an artist here, younger artists in particular, come in because that that I think um, you know, I always used to contemplate whether there's value in having a groovy and a power. I mean, I wasn't so common as a patron, so I know why they did it. You had to do something, it was real unfair to groovy people. Because that whole thing is judgment crowd response. They can say what they want. And they had groovy songs that was bigger, right? But you couldn't win. You know what I mean? I want them to respond or super or runny. It's crazy. But um, I appreciate what you all did with the split of younger, or you know, which it's it shows that you're conscious of creating this space. And I had some younger artists, yeah. I think Saki might come out before before your episode. And when I hear how he talks about Ultimate Succer Champions, I say, Well, the world is really a cycling, no boy. When I hear how excited he is, he's like, well, I'm waiting to see how the song performed to see if I'll go in the junior or the big one, you know. I mean, it's real interesting to see. And the you talk about a passion for culture, and it's probably the best place to rap because the culture does need some people to stand in the gap. And the more I read about your career, like I reading about things, I mean, quick slice might have been the most interesting part because I have a lot of ram here, but it's like them gaps are so huge, and even there's a there was a risk of, and I think about it from Patreon. I don't ever know the artist's side of it, I know learning that. But I find it's unfortunate that you think go understand what so monarch was at all because they don't understand the people that say so is for older people, like you say, but tell us teenagers. When you see Bungie Garland, he in particular, or Fayanne, or Maximus, when you see we artists, because Super Blue and you respect them and you love them and things. Same thing you say about the Soka Parang, but Bungie and the most we. When you see we on that stage, and so and Bungie was crazy with his production value and thing, that frenzy that them was sending me into, I said, but you'd go never experience that except if it's a zest or steam or that type of so it seems as though you're in that space where you're recreating that and bringing it back. Talking to artists now when you hear Saki talk about it, it's like shit. This is the way our heroes was talking about soccer monarch then. Some of these ideas that you have, the catwalk, the ultimate soccer champion, you you envisioning things like this in terms of how we carry on the culture that in your mind when you're coming up with it?

SPEAKER_00: 1:51:59

I I sometimes foolishly I am like Captain Culture to me, right? I love our culture and I love this country. So even when I was in LA, as much as I was doing well there, even though I didn't have no set of money while I was there, it was like I was missing home because I'm missing my people and I'm missing my culture, and it's something I always was passionate about. So I always looking at ways to elevate our culture and to put us on our map globally now because I feel like we have so much rich talent here, and what a lot of the artists and the entertainers miss here is not the talent, it's the opportunities. So I think that if I could leverage my international network with what the talent that we have here, I could give these people opportunities to put them on a large scale. So with Carnival Catwalk, it was that I seen we have all these fashion designers, they're designing for all these big bands, but then where do they go from here? How many of them have ever been on an international stage before? So we took the winner to Milan Fashion Week, and then we took the second place to New York Fashion Week. And that's what I wanted to do with soccer, where now I could go and start making connections with some international music festivals and say where the winner of Ultimate Soka Champion could perform in an Ultra, could perform in a um Tomorrowland, could perform on those big stages and break through soccer in that aspect to the audience. Because anybody who ever experienced a performance from a soca artist, bro, we are some of the greatest performers in the world. And I say that without apology. I've seen top performers perform. When I was in LA, I went to numerous concerts. There's no other artist from any other genre that performs like how a soca artist can move our crowd. Some of the artists I would give them, though, they have dancers, and some of them are great dancers in themselves, like the Chris Bronx, and they can actually dance. So you don't really find soccer artists who could do those choreographed dances. But in terms of commanding a crowd, those artists who have seen perform internationally, more their songs are bigger than them as an artist. Yeah, the production sometimes. Right. So you would find that the crowd knows their music and sings along with them. But in terms of the stage performance, a soca artist is a great entertainer and performer and crowd mover. So I just want to be able to facilitate that for them to give them those opportunities.

Corie: 1:54:12

Now it's something we had to thank you for because that's uh I think it's important that you see that and see themselves in those spaces, especially the international spaces, because nothing will feel better than when you see a trine abroad, when you see somebody oh, they make it. We still have that thing as a small island, maybe where when somebody makes it and they're doing it abroad, I think the whole country feels proud. So I appreciate your work on that, brother. And before we end, I want to thank you too for your radio show. You and Sonny and them, all the fellas talking little sense on your radio. We went through a period that I gap two on the radio, you know, where the radio conversations start to become how we went from Dale and Tony to kind of like emptiness on the radio, you know what I mean? But only carrying on a conversation that the nation needs. The old talk and the laugh, there's a see I know it's not it's not by chance. I know I know I know that I know that y'all take it seriously. So salute to you and Sonny and situation on that too. Yeah, they would have time to check notes before I say tongues and just make sure.

SPEAKER_00: 1:55:08

I know it's a lot of different hats are wearing.

Corie: 1:55:10

It's problematic, you know, the fellow's problematic, but we didn't do bad at all. We didn't do bad at all. You want to say any listen notes? Leave in here for China. We didn't talk about that. I want Apu C VH1 girl cruise. Let's came by a chili intro, destroy like cannibal cats champion, room it was like promoters of the each other.