Nigel Teles­ford

So­ca star Akhen­aton “Yung Bred­da” Lewis has just spent his first Christ­mas at home in T&T in many years and re­ceived the gift of na­tion­al in­ter­est and ac­claim, along with time with his daugh­ter and fam­i­ly mem­bers. The ac­claim came af­ter his re­cent re­lease, The Great­est Bend Over, sky­rock­et­ed past Kes’ “Co­coa Tea” hit sin­gle to claim the #1 spot on Ap­ple Mu­sic’s top songs from T&T since De­cem­ber 21.

“For the past few years I missed Christ­mas,” Lewis re­vealed. “Since 2020 I haven’t had a Christ­mas home ‘cause we al­ways trav­el­ling and work­ing and such, so this year was my first Christ­mas with my daugh­ter and the fam­i­ly, so of course it was epic!

“Af­ter that, it’s back to work and I’m bring­ing in the new year in Cana­da - I will be do­ing some mu­sic videos out there and keep­ing the mo­men­tum go­ing - the work nev­er stops!”

Re­leased on De­cem­ber 2, The Great­est Bend Over, a song on the Big Links Rid­dim, in­stant­ly found favour with lis­ten­ers, DJs, fans, and pro­mot­ers due to its in­fec­tious zess-meets-so­ca type beat, mes­mer­iz­ing melodies and catchy cho­rus. Writ­ten and pro­duced by Full Blow En­ter­tain­ment, the spicy of­fi­cial vi­su­alis­er fea­tur­ing dancer Lu­na Gillard was filmed and edit­ed by Nxus Col­lec­tive, was re­leased on De­cem­ber 12 and is fast ap­proach­ing 1 mil­lion views on YouTube with over 730,000 views as of De­cem­ber 27.

“Well, to be hon­est, the in­spi­ra­tion for these songs wasn’t built by me alone, you know,” Lewis ad­mit­ted. “They are the prod­ucts of Shaft and Full Blown En­ter­tain­ment col­lab­o­ra­tions. Shaft is the main man be­hind the Ket­tle Pot and he has been the writer for some of the biggest songs for many years now Full Blown is the team of broth­ers be­hind The Great­est Bend Over and every­body knows about them and all the great work they have done.”

“From day one since I meet them it was like a re­al cool, hum­ble vibe ‘cause a lot of peo­ple don’t know Yung Bred­da off the stage and out­side of the hype per­sona. I feel these songs were in­spired by just me be­ing me, and if you re­al­ly lis­ten to the mu­sic, it was ac­tu­al­ly built and writ­ten around me and my style.”

With an eclec­tic mu­sic palette and a ver­sa­tile style de­rived from his love for mu­sic of all gen­res, Yung Bred­da has evolved be­yond the zess and steamy con­tri­bu­tions which made him a house­hold name dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. His main pro­duc­er and man­ag­er, Jesse John, own­er of Op­ti­mus Pro­duc­tions has been in­stru­men­tal in his rise to suc­cess and stands be­side him still to shep­herd and di­rect his way for­ward.

“We linked up and just clicked and of course I saw the tal­ent and I heard the po­ten­tial,” said John, “but still we knew we had to put in the work and stay con­sis­tent in or­der to make it and to keep grow­ing to high­er heights. We have our long-term goals and we’re work­ing stead­fast­ly to­ward achiev­ing them, but we keep each oth­er ground­ed and hum­ble while we work al­so and don’t ever let our­selves get caught up in the hype.

“Usu­al­ly, by the time the pub­lic is go­ing off on some­thing we’ve done, we’re al­ready fo­cused on the next steps so we don’t have the time to get swell head­ed and we’re not in this just for mon­ey or fame, we re­al­ly want to put Trinidad on the map in a dif­fer­ent kind of way and on a dif­fer­ent lev­el and we not gonna stop un­til we get there... and even then, there’s more lev­els to go af­ter that too so look out for much much more from Yung Bred­da En­ter­tain­ment and Op­ti­mus Pro­duc­tions.”

For now, the im­me­di­ate goal ap­pears to be to flood the mar­ket with qual­i­ty Car­ni­val of­fer­ings and re­lease a full al­bum of so­ca songs, while al­so es­tab­lish­ing a sol­id pres­ence in­side T&T Car­ni­val 2025 and through­out the Car­ni­val cir­cuit there­after. With songs such as 12%, Ket­tle Pot, No Stress, Bruk Bruk, Free Like A Bird and The Great­est Bend Over al­ready find­ing favour with fans and se­cur­ing ro­ta­tion on ra­dio and playlists every­where, Bred­da and Op­ti­mus show no signs of slow­ing down any time soon.

“Well, you know, Young Bred­da En­ter­tain­ment, Op­ti­mus Pro­duc­tions, we are al­ways full of sur­pris­es,” said Lewis, “and I’s ah man don’t like to let the cat out the bag, so I would like to tell them to wait and see... Wait and see what Je­sus has planned for me. Yuh un­der­stand.

“We have lots of plans in mo­tion and some in the mak­ing still. I just want to add to this top­ic that Young Bred­da En­ter­tain­ment is rep­re­sent­ing all gen­res of mu­sic. I nev­er lim­it my­self in no way or how. Car­ni­val time is here so we do­ing the so­ca cause it is tra­di­tion and it is cul­ture and that is who we are - it is al­ways a part of us, so­ca mu­sic, but still, I’m do­ing Afro mu­sic, dance­hall, ket­tle­pot is clos­er to Ca­lyp­so so don’t be sur­prised if you see me in the tents or Skin­ner Park for de Monarch.’’

“Man if I have to do Coun­try mu­sic and all, once I go in a stu­dio and I like the rid­dim and it sounds good, once I love the mu­sic and I can sing on it, I would do that for all the lis­ten­ers out there.”