Aba A Luke

"For peo­ple like me, Ash Wednes­day come like New Year's so pre­pare your ears, here's Mr Doh Care. First I went Ladies First, spe­cial sec­tion up­stairs-Laun­dry watch me like 'this my dance, who let he in here?" Have you heard those lyrics some­where be­fore? In the past week, there's no doubt that you may have stum­bled up­on a track ei­ther on You Tube or on one of the ur­ban fre­quen­cies here in T&T, where this re­frain is belt­ed out by none oth­er than Richard "Chro­mat­ics" Raj Ku­mar. It's a lethal dose of post-Car­ni­val re­al­i­ty, wrapped up, or as he put it, "rapped" up and dis­trib­uted to un­doubt­ed­ly in­voke some lev­el of dis­cus­sion and thought on a num­ber of things that took place with­in C2K12. The Tri­ni born rap­per, who has been at the fore of the lo­cal rap fra­ter­ni­ty for many years, said the song which was re­leased around 7 am on Feb­ru­ary 25 has been mak­ing the rounds and is gen­er­at­ing quite a bit of in­ter­est with­in both the ra­dio and DJ cir­cles and in the pub­lic do­main as well.

"I got the idea dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. I was kind of lack­ing a lot of in­spi­ra­tion be­cause you know Car­ni­val sea­son isn't re­al­ly our time. When I say our time, I mean hip hop artistes, reg­gae artistes and dance­hall artistes from Trinidad. "Dur­ing the Car­ni­val lines start­ed to pop in my head and around Car­ni­val week­end I wrote the first verse and on the Thurs­day af­ter Ash Wednes­day, I fin­ished it off and record­ed it," said Chro­mat­ics. He not­ed that af­ter hear­ing the fin­ished prod­uct he told him­self that he need­ed to put the track out in­to the pub­lic do­main quick­ly. He pro­ceed­ed to up­load the raw ver­sion of the song, with a video on­to YouTube and with­in ten min­utes of post­ing, the video had re­ceived 300 views. "A ra­dio an­nounc­er was one of the first per­sons to com­ment on the track. He said, 'yo, I want a clean ver­sion,'" ex­plained the rap­per. He said he had nev­er in­tend­ed to re­lease the track on ra­dio so dis­trib­ut­ing an edit­ed ver­sion meant that he would have to head back to the stu­dio. "I went to sleep and woke up two hours lat­er to see the video had been viewed 5,000 times," said 'Mat­ics, re­veal­ing that he sub­se­quent­ly went to the stu­dio at High­way Records and the team was able to de­liv­er an edit­ed ver­sion of Car­ni­val Rap Up to the ra­dio sta­tions.

When asked whether he was con­cerned of a pos­si­ble back­lash from the strong lyrics and mes­sages the song projects, Chro­mat­ics said, "I'm not afraid be­cause I think peo­ple un­der­stand what the song is about. "I think peo­ple un­der­stand that it's more comedic that se­ri­ous. It's more pi­cong than a diss to any one artiste and I al­so think that right now the buzz that it's cre­at­ing is ac­tu­al­ly good for the lo­cal in­dus­try be­cause it's keep­ing our lo­cal artistes cur­rent in a time when all the for­eign artistes are be­ing re-in­tro­duced on ra­dio." Ex­plain­ing that the dy­nam­ic of the track was based on things he'd been see­ing on so­cial net­work­ing sites that had been tak­ing place with the artistes and oth­er peo­ple in the in­dus­try, Chro­mat­ics said he had even got­ten a bit of the lyrics from the Black­ber­ry Mes­sen­ger sta­tus of one of his friends. He said he hoped artistes would have a sense of hu­mor about it all.

"I rep­re­sent for all artistes out­side of the Car­ni­val sea­son and no­body should take it as an in­ten­tion­al diss. If Jamie Fox were to talk about Michael Jack­son or Whit­ney Hous­ton in a com­e­dy show-those are great artistes and no­body can de­ny that and every­body loves them and re­spects them, but when you hear Jamie Foxx or Ed­die Grif­fin talk­ing smack about them, you can't help but laugh," he high­light­ed. Chro­mat­ics is nev­er one to shy away from any sit­u­a­tion. In the weeks and months ahead, he said the pub­lic could ex­pect a num­ber of new tracks from the mem­bers of High­way Records. He al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­vite mu­sic lovers to check out his team's on­line page at http://www.face­book.com/mat­ic­stt, fol­low him on Twit­ter @chro­mat­ics1 and check out his YouTube chan­nel at www.youtube.com/mat­ics868

lyrics

Verse 1

For peo­ple like me Ash Wednes­day come like new years,

so pre­pare your ears here's Mr. Doh Care/

First I went ladies first, spe­cial sec­tion up­stairs/

Laun­dry watch me like "this my dance who let he in here?"/

And Gar­lin fly he dread, Fay-ann shave off half she head/

They say we ain't tak­ing ad­van­tage so we drop­ping out in­stead/

Kim­ba did an in­ter­view, I feel sor­ry for yuh breads/

Cause when Iw­er pass So­phie start to talk to he in­stead/

Ker­win say yeah I could write, but I wan't d spot­light/

Yuh dun know COTT ain't pay­ing roy­al­ties so I go­ing and grab a mic/

Ter­ry Seals had a big tune but I ain't see him no fete/

Car­ni­val done and Linx kyah give him back he gyal yet/

Prophet say for­get that, no sup­port out d sea­son/

He start to throw wine and give we all kin­da rea­son/

Iz wine all in she face, wine all in she eye/

And right be­fore he leave d stage is JAH!.......Rasta­fari/

No dis­re­spect in­tend­ed, you are my artist still/

But the pres­sure to eat a food a break down the strong willed/

While Trevor Say­ers fool­ing poor peo­ple to buy out all his pills/

Then he in his video sh---ing on 100 dol­lar bills/

Chill..............

Verse 2

I see Swap­pi do a show get­ting head in Sealots/

Then I see a pic­ture he wear­ing a up­side down cross/

It's 3 to the Z, triple 6, can't you see/

That rum is not to drink it, on­ly good to sap yuh knee/

Na­dia bring out she band and say that she ain't want no man/

So I see man winin on man, down in d pan/

Strip­ping naked in the Army, I like what go­ing on?

Then a woman pull down she panty cause a De­von Matthews song/

Dig­i­cel put up the loot, Kes do a song with snoop/

Cas­si like he dis­ap­pear and Er­phraan wear a body suite/

And how De­stra come third? I just talk­ing the truth/

She need to pack up and re­group or go have an­oth­er youth/

And Sher­win did well but most peo­ple weren't im­pressed/

But, that's al­right yuh back up dancers re­al bess/

And Iw­er ain't learn he les­son, when yuh see him ask the ques­tion/

Yuh sing d same song twice and don't ex­pect to come sec­ond?

It's all kin­da bac­cha­nal run­ning through my cra­ni­um/

Like how come the re­sults weren't an­nounced in the sta­di­um/

Every­body talk­ing rob­bery, but they beg­ging for a bligh/

They lie...........the man they re­al­ly rob is Ben­jai/

Verse 3

These are just my thoughts in ex­change for yuh pen­nies/

But most peo­ple ain't lis­ten­ing like is Pan in the Semis/

K.I. took the Chut­ney Monarch well de­served might I say/

Cause I nev­er re­al­ly liked Ravi B any­way/

So who's the king of so­ca? Or need I as­sume/

The man who took the ti­tles and put the flag on the moon/

See it's a heights, so look for his next move soon/

Cause his b-mo­bile con­tract ex­pir­ing in June/