Cherisse Moe

The streets have stamped their seals of ap­proval on Kes The Band and its ground­break­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with hip hop sen­sa­tion Snoop Dogg on the song, Stress Away. From the mo­ment the sin­gle was re­leased on Wednes­day, fans have not stopped talk­ing, "tweet­ing" and "face­book­ing" about the fact that the mul­ti-plat­inum rap­per, re­al name, Calvin Broad­us, was ac­tu­al­ly fea­tured on a so­ca track. And with the orig­i­nal song and video, filmed by lo­cal di­rec­tor Ryan Khan, gain­ing more than 34,000 views on Youtube, many are say­ing that Kees and his band have suc­ceed­ed in rais­ing the so­ca bar. Kees agrees. Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian on Fri­day, the reign­ing Groovy So­ca Monarch, who placed most of the praise for the his­toric col­lab­o­ra­tion square­ly at the feet of in­dus­try heavy­weights Jonathan Paty and Scot Sardinha, said he's all about pro­gres­sion and push­ing the en­ve­lope.

Stat­ing that the world has now be­come more ac­quaint­ed with T&T and so­ca mu­sic, Kees said the time has come for lo­cal artistes to seize every op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pand their hori­zons with open arms. "So­ca and T&T are ac­tu­al­ly on a buzz right now. Peo­ple are look­ing to col­lab­o­rate with Trinidad and we need to take ad­van­tage of it," he added. Al­though the 30-year-old artiste has been in the mu­sic grind for years, 2011 was un­doubt­ed­ly his year to shine. His "it" mo­ment, he said, came in Sep­tem­ber when Kes The Band ap­peared and per­formed on Good Day NY on the US tele­vi­sion net­work, FOX. "We were kin­da sur­prised that a lot of peo­ple on the streets knew who we were. We would be in the sub­way and all of a sud­den end up sign­ing au­to­graphs," he joked.

"New York is a new mar­ket for us and it con­tin­ues to grow." Next on Kees' in­creas­ing­ly hec­tic agen­da is de­fend­ing his ti­tle against 13 of So­ca's best on Car­ni­val Fri­day when the fi­nals of the C2K12 in­stal­ment of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch kick off at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Port-of-Spain. Mak­ing it clear that he's prepar­ing to "come cor­rect" and put on a show for the crowd, Kees has gone in­to com­pe­ti­tion mode-but don't ex­pect him to en­gage in any so­ca pi­cong. "If it hap­pens that I win again then it hap­pens. If not, I'm still gonna have a ball, I'm re­al­ly just gonna have fun," he said. Even be­fore he lights up the So­ca Monarch stage, the "busy-as-a-bee" singer is gear­ing up to stage Kes The Band's 3rd an­nu­al con­cert, Un­der The Trees, at the Ho­tel Nor­mandie, St Ann's, on Feb­ru­ary 9.

The event promis­es to be a grand af­fair and boasts a num­ber of "sur­prise" acts as well as per­for­mances from artistes such as David Rud­der, Lord Nel­son, JW & Blaze, K-Rich, TC and Shal. So, here's the big ques­tion: When does Kees ever sleep? "Any­time and any­where I get the chance," he said. These days, he's av­er­ag­ing five hours, which he ad­mits, "isn't too bad."