Cherisse Moe

If you can't seem to get Lil Bitts' Sweet­ness out of your head, you're not alone. The in­fec­tious track has been blaz­ing the air­waves, and if Shiv­onne Churche, 26, has her way, it would re­main like that long af­ter Car­ni­val 2011 is over. The song, which is on the pop­u­lar Hon­ey Rid­dim, was writ­ten by her broth­er and man­ag­er, Sher­rard Churche, 23, who con­tin­ues to make a name for him­self as a tal­ent­ed com­pos­er.

Call­ing on lis­ten­ers to "wine to d ground and go down, go down," Sweet­ness not on­ly show­cas­es Lil Bitts' strong, melo­di­ous vo­cals, but it has cat­a­pult­ed her in­to the spot­light for the Car­ni­val sea­son. But, don't call it a come­back! The songstress, stand­ing at four feet 11-inch­es, has been an in­te­gral part of the so­ca in­dus­try for the past nine years and count­ing. "You know, a lot of peo­ple have been say­ing that Lil Bitts is back. I want them to know that I've al­ways been here!"

Still Lil Bitts

Al­ready gear­ing up to per­form in some of the sea­son's biggest events, like Wasa Fete and Eyes Wide Shut, Lil Bitts, who, con­trary to what's be­ing said, still goes by that so­bri­quet, said her phone had been ring­ing off the hook late­ly, not that she was com­plain­ing, though. "My man­agers are go­ing crazy. Book­ings from all over the place have been com­ing in fast and fu­ri­ous," she said, dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view at her stu­dio in Diego Mar­tin. Why do she think Sweet­ness is such a ma­jor hit?

"I think be­cause it's not a male-bash­ing song. It sup­ports both men and women, so it works for the both sides," she rea­soned, with a laugh. "Al­so, hear­ing a fe­male chant on a so­ca rhythm catch­es peo­ple's at­ten­tion be­cause we are so high­ly in­flu­enced by dance­hall mu­sic." But while she's hap­py that Sweet­ness has been well re­ceived by the mass­es, Lil Bitts has had her share of dis­ap­point­ments.

"I start­ed my jour­ney in 2002 and I've learnt a lot, but I've al­so got­ten burnt a lot. "I'm an artiste who knows what it is to have a hit song one year and a mediocre song the next," she said. "Just last year, I didn't have a big song. So, what I'm re­ceiv­ing now, I want peo­ple to un­der­stand how much I'm ap­pre­ci­at­ing it."

Big things

Lil Bitts, who is cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a Bach­e­lor of Arts De­gree in Per­form­ing Arts at Costaatt will com­pete in the 2011 in­stal­ment of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ca Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion. She will be per­form­ing Sweet­ness and Pa­rade of D Bands, a track penned by her broth­er and mas­ter­mind, Ker­nal Roberts, in the Groovy and Pow­er So­ca cat­e­gories, re­spec­tive­ly. Her third track for the sea­son is a pan song called We Own The Night, writ­ten and pro­duced by Toron­to-born Tal­ib Robin­son. She said the tune, which was re­leased in T&T and Toron­to, was al­so "do­ing well."

What's next on her agen­da? How about work­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al su­per­stars Bruno Mars and Ne-Yo? Well, be­fore that, the pe­tite artiste has her eyes set on launch­ing her very own com­pa­ny, which she plans to call Go For­ward En­ter­tain­ment Ltd. "My broth­er and I re­al­ly want to help de­vel­op the mu­si­cal tal­ent of our young peo­ple who want to pur­sue dif­fer­ent as­pects of mu­sic... It's in the mak­ing, it's def­i­nite­ly some­thing I want to do in the fu­ture." She may be lit­tle, but for Shiv­onne Churche, on­ly big things seem to be on the hori­zon.