Malis­sa Lara

Though he doesn't sing gospel mu­sic, Shane "Ri­zon" Gib­son en­sures his mu­sic brings glo­ry to God. He said he will nev­er use ob­scene lan­guage in his songs and he be­lieves that if you re­flect on his mu­sic, the fruit of the Spir­it is there.

A Chris­t­ian for the last ten years, Ri­zon said he ac­cept­ed Je­sus Christ, got bap­tised and has since been on the straight and nar­row path. "I can't go on stage and sing any­thing I don't be­lieve in," he said last Tues­day. He ex­plained, "The mu­sic is an ex­ten­sion of me; first and fore­most I am a Chris­t­ian." The 20-some­thing year old artiste, who re­leased Reach in 2007, con­tin­ued with his pos­i­tive mes­sages in songs like I like Yuh Way. This year he re­leased Lib­er­ate, a song about free­ing one­self from a bad re­la­tion­ship.

"I want­ed to find a unique way to say some­thing that is com­mon. Many peo­ple are in bad re­la­tion­ships," he said. Stand­ing lean at six foot three, with dread­locks, he's not had the mis­for­tune of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a "ta­ban­ca." He said it was not far-fetched for him to to­tal­ly em­pathise, as he's had friends who have had bad re­la­tion­ships.

A dri­ven and seem­ing­ly gen­tle in­di­vid­ual, Ri­zon is pas­sion­ate about the mu­sic he hears right now. "I am dis­ap­point­ed in not on­ly what peo­ple are writ­ing but what the pow­ers-that-be are grant­i­ng air­play. "I am dis­ap­point­ed be­cause what chil­dren are learn­ing word for word is de­stroy­ing our so­ci­ety," he said. That dis­ap­point­ment on­ly fu­els Ri­zon to con­tin­ue be­ing pos­i­tive. He has been speak­ing to young peo­ple all over Trinidad and To­ba­go, en­cour­ag­ing them to be pos­i­tive as well. Ri­zon was not al­ways an ar­tic­u­late speak­er and at­trib­ut­es his abil­i­ty to speak ef­fec­tive­ly to his stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. "It en­hanced my abil­i­ty to speak," he said. Still a bit shy, Ri­zon said if he was able to do things his way he would be be­hind the scenes. "But I be­lieve I have an oblig­a­tion to use the gifts God has graced me with."

Reach out

Ri­zon's Reach was in the num­ber one po­si­tion for four weeks on Tem­po's Cross Caribbean Count­down. Ri­zon is as­pir­ing to re­lease a CD. How­ev­er, the date of com­ple­tion is yet to be an­nounced. He said pro­duc­ing mu­sic is ex­pen­sive and to com­plete his al­bum would be an av­er­age of $60,000. Ri­zon is sched­uled to per­form with Rus­sell Leonce and Ruth at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um, UWI, on Sat­ur­day.