An­ge­lo Mar­celle

This time it has come in the form of a pow­er­ful woman. An­je Woodruffe has sent pop­u­lar reg­gae artist Rayvon to the top ten of the In­die charts. Born in Bar­ba­dos, the plat­inum record­ing artiste was made pop­u­lar with hits such as Bash­ment Par­ty, Big Up, Nice & Love­ly and An­gel, and has since launched his so­lo project and la­bel called Get that Ched­dar En­ter­tain­ment (GTC).

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Game on Lock En­ter­tain­ment, the man­age­ment com­pa­ny for GTC, Rayvon launched his third so­lo al­bum en­ti­tled Rayvon, on Au­gust 27. The al­bum fea­tures long time singing part­ner Red Fox, as well as col­lab­o­ra­tions from Jah Snow­cone, Ko­bra Khan, Mr Lexx and pro­duc­er Dain­jamet­alz (al­so from T&T). The de­but song off the self ti­tled al­bum that has rapid­ly risen on the In­die Charts is Back it Up. The song is a groovy so­ca that proud­ly makes a call for girls in the Caribbean to back it up on him. The song was pro­duced by pop­u­lar mu­sic pro­duc­er from Trinidad, Carl 'Beaver' Hen­der­son.

Beaver was al­so the pro­duc­er re­spon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the hit song, The Gan­ja Farmer, sung by T&T's first recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed artist, Mar­lon Ash­er. The song (Back it Up), was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in 2006, and al­though the tim­ing for re­leas­ing the track was bad that year, Woodruffe said, "I knew the song had po­ten­tial to do great things. Last year Rayvon dis­cussed start­ing his so­lo project and sug­gest­ed us­ing Back it Up as the sin­gle off the al­bum." Woodruffe didn't hes­i­tate and said "let's do it."

On Au­gust 28, the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Record­ing Artists (IAIRA) an­nounced the for­mal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Back it Up as a top ten el­i­gi­ble In­die song. The IAIRA recog­nis­es and ho­n­ours artis­tic achieve­ment, tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy and over­all ex­cel­lence in sound record­ing.

Even from her VJ days at 98.9fm, Woodruffe has been be­hind the scenes wheel­ing, deal­ing and shout­ing the name of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Woodruffe is al­so known for her work with Mar­lon Ash­er. She and her broth­er, Geron Woodruffe, formed the com­pa­ny Woodruffe & Woodruffe and they re­main re­spon­si­ble for Mar­lon Ash­er's ca­reer.

Ac­cord­ing to Woodruffe, ru­mours that Rayvon and long­time singing col­league Shag­gy were at war for his de­ci­sion to go so­lo were un­true. "There is no break up be­tween the two. When one per­son is in the fore­ground the oth­er per­son does not get seen. Rayvon saw the op­por­tu­ni­ty to move for­ward and it is not a sep­a­ra­tion from Shag­gy. They will still do tours."

Since the launch Rayvon has been to both Is­rael and Cu­ra­cao with Shag­gy. Next week they go to Nige­ria.

De­ter­mined to see T&T on the main­stream in­ter­na­tion­al scene, Woodruffe con­tin­ues to work with high-end per­form­ers and en­ter­tain­ers with a long-term vi­sion of tru­ly ex­pand­ing and cre­at­ing aware­ness for the mu­sic in­dus­try in this coun­try.

Woodruffe con­tin­ues to func­tion as the pub­lish­ing ad­min­is­tra­tor for Rayvon, and ad­mits this is just the be­gin­ning. When asked how the col­lab­o­ra­tion came about, Woodruffe said, "I want­ed to try a crossover tune with Rayvon be­cause he has the kind of voice that can re­al­ly flow. I spoke to Beaver and asked him to send me some­thing for Rayvon to work with. Rayvon liked what he heard. He record­ed the vo­cals and the rest as they say is his­to­ry." Rayvon is be­ing nom­i­nat­ed by the Bar­ba­dos Mu­sic Awards in the En­ter­tain­er of the year cat­e­go­ry in 20111. Last year it went to Robyn 'Ri­han­na' Fen­ty.