Sean Nero

While the face of en­ter­tain­er Ri­car­do Drue might still be fresh to the so­ca mu­sic lovers in T&T, by uni­ver­sal stan­dards, he's an in­ter­na­tion­al act. Not on­ly can the 26-year-old heart­throb sing and dance, but he rocks a unique dress code and does not lack in over­all ap­peal, as women con­stant­ly re­mind him. Four­teen years have passed since Drue has been de­light­ing au­di­ences in the Unit­ed States and the Caribbean with his is­land pop melodies (so­ca and R&B fu­sion).

But be­fore Kees Di­ef­fen­thaller's break­through, lo­cal disc jock­eys had worked to con­vince him (Drue) for well over a decade, that this was not the mar­ket for his fu­sion-styled sound. Us­ing that mu­sic for­mu­la, how­ev­er, Drue to­geth­er with his band Cross­fire, opened for plat­inum mu­sic acts such as Sean Kingston, Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, Jef­frey Os­borne, Bow Wow and Sol­dier Boy in North Amer­i­ca. These out­ings even earned him a chance to sweet talk sexy African-Amer­i­can ac­tress Gabriel Union.

But when Sun­day Vibe caught up with Drue-who by the way was man­ag­ing a hec­tic Car­ni­val sched­ule with lead­ing mu­sic band Roy Cape All Stars-it came as quite a sur­prise when the newest front­line vo­cal­ist said this about his ex­pe­ri­ence with the band of which he has been a mem­ber, over the past two months: "It's like school­ing. There's a lot that I was do­ing wrong in the last four years. Now that I'm un­der some­one like Dr Roy Cape, ba­si­cal­ly, I'm tak­ing this sea­son as be­ing at school and learn­ing the nec­es­sary things that I need to learn. Next year, will be a bet­ter year for me." Drue, it turns out, was re­shap­ing his vo­cal tech­niques and stage pres­ence to achieve greater com­mand in both his ap­pear­ance and sound, mov­ing away from his oth­er­wise sweet R&B-like strains, though, tem­porar­i­ly.

He said: "Juice Man (Car­lyle Roberts) mu­si­cal di­rec­tor of the band sat down with me and told me to take this year and learn what you have to learn, be­cause there is go­ing to come a time when some­one would have to take the man­tle. So, learn what I have to learn now, so if that time comes soon, I am al­ready pre­pared for it. Drue added: "I am a sponge. I will sit down in the band room and I will pay at­ten­tion to every­thing and I will do what it is I'm asked to do, if I know that I'm be­ing pushed in the right di­rec­tion."

Present ad­just­ments to his vo­cal de­liv­ery and stage pres­ence, it seems, co­in­cides with his writ­ing ad­vances, too. Patrice Roberts of HD fame was a ma­jor in­flu­ence in the lat­ter area. That in­flu­ence con­tin­ued when Drue be­came a fix­ture with Im­ij & Co. Now un­der the Roy Cape ban­ner, growth in his com­pos­ing has not been stunt­ed. By the way, if you hear him an­swer­ing to the name 'short-man' it's okay. That's his nick-name with­in the Roy Cape fam­i­ly.

Chang­ing for­tunes

While many were un­com­fort­able with his de­ci­sion to call it quits with Im­ij & Co and take up po­si­tion with Roy Cape All Stars, Drue said, so far, Car­ni­val 2012 has been good to him. He has three pub­lished sin­gles for the sea­son. They are Shaw­ty, Win­ing Ga­lore and Jam. Ker­win Du Bois wrote the lat­ter. Pow­ered by the Roy Cape brand he's in all the ma­jor Car­ni­val events and did not know if he will even­tu­al­ly get to ex­pe­ri­ence the thrill of play­ing mas in T&T, cit­ing that the band might be on the road on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day. The pic­ture paint­ed by Drue on this oc­ca­sion was far more in­spir­ing than the tales he re­lat­ed two years ago, in a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view.

The young en­ter­tain­er, back then, found him­self in a com­pro­mis­ing po­si­tion hav­ing to grov­el at the feet of Car­ni­val fete pro­mot­ers dur­ing the pre-Car­ni­val time slot hop­ing to se­cure work. When that failed, he unashamed­ly of­fered to per­form for free, but still, im­pre­sar­ios turned him down, even though he record­ed a hon­ey-laced num­ber with Patrice Roberts ti­tled Sin­gle To Min­gle. Oth­er mu­si­cal treats in his ar­se­nal were J'Ou­vert Jam and Win­ing Spe­cial­ist. Still, no one would hire him, de­spite his in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure. But fol­low­ing an in­tro­duc­tion be­tween George Ng Wai, man­ag­er of Im­ij & Co and Drue, the tal­ent scout signed the as­pi­rant. That re­la­tion­ship last­ed two years. Drue ac­cept­ed an­oth­er of­fer, just over two months ago.

Mu­sic: A bless­ing and a curse

Con­vinced that mu­sic could be both a bless­ing and a curse, Drue was, how­ev­er, re­lieved that so far in his ca­reer the ex­pe­ri­ence had been the for­mer. In his mind, a mu­si­cians' ap­proach would de­ter­mine their rate of suc­cess of lack there­of. "Mu­sic could be a curse when mu­si­cians see that things aren't work­ing out, but could not bring them­selves to ex­plore oth­er av­enues for earn­ing, since play­ing mu­sic is all they could see them­selves do­ing. "It's a bless­ing be­cause I get to in­spire peo­ple with my lyrics and per­for­mance. I get to show peo­ple what I can do and let peo­ple feel what I'm feel­ing."

A ladies man

It's of­fi­cial. Women can't get enough of Drue. But he wants the pub­lic to be­lieve that tak­ing things in stride was the un­qual­i­fied method he used when deal­ing with the avalanche of af­fec­tion­ate ges­tures from the op­po­site sex. "I en­joy it as an artiste. It's an­oth­er thing that most artistes go in­to the busi­ness for. Even though there's the love for the mu­sic, a lot of artistes love the at­ten­tion. I re­al­ly en­joy the at­ten­tion, but try and keep it at that, just so­cial. When young or ma­ture women make ad­vances to artistes like me and we are too friend­ly it comes across as more than, hey! How are you do­ing? It be­comes some­thing that sug­gests you're in­to me."

Drue does not boast of hav­ing a lot of girl­friends, nei­ther does he en­gage in the prac­tice of kiss­ing and telling. He went on to make it clear that he had no prob­lems win­ning hearts. "I'm the type to have a two-year, three-year re­la­tion­ship at a time. I haven't had a lot, though. day work-out regime–were de­signed to cast aside his smooth per­sona and give him "an edge." It was done on the urg­ing of a men­tor who felt that for Drue, it was nec­es­sary to take his mu­sic se­ri­ous­ly on his jour­ney to be­ing a pro­fes­sion­al.

That de­ci­sion was a care­ful one. Drue want­ed his body art to be a sign of sig­nif­i­cance. Well round­ed, lov­ing and kind, were the words Drue used to de­scribe him­self. While he en­joyed en­ter­tain­ing, he on­ly want­ed to steal the show when he's cen­tre-stage as op­posed to be­ing with friends. But no mat­ter how hard he tried, Drue still has not been able to shake the opin­ion of those who know him the least, but tes­ti­fied that he was a snub.

Those clos­est to him, de­clared, how­ev­er, that away from the spot­light, he was quite an in­tro­vert. "It's the fur­thest thing from the truth. My fa­cial ex­pres­sion does not ac­cu­rate­ly com­mu­ni­cate my feel­ings. My brain is al­ways go­ing. I'm al­ways try­ing to cre­ate. It's not that I don't want to be around peo­ple. I'm a re­served in­di­vid­ual, but any­body that wants to come over and say hel­lo, don't be afraid," he said.

Defin­ing Drue:

He's the son of lead­ing lo­cal fe­male tele­vi­sion and ra­dio pre­sen­ter Nico­la Bar­riteau. His fa­ther is Mervyn Er­ic Drue Jr. Drue (Ri­car­do) was born in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da. When he came home to T&T, he was two months old. A past pupil of San Fer­nan­do Boys' Gov­ern­ment School and St Madeleine Sec­ondary School, Drue mi­grat­ed to Mi­a­mi and lived with his grand­fa­ther Mervyn Er­ic Drue, un­til his pass­ing. He then took up res­i­dence with his fa­ther. US ed­u­ca­tors gave him tops marks for the aca­d­e­m­ic abil­i­ties as pro­vid­ed through T&T's ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. This made it easy for him to en­roll at a Mi­a­mi-based high school. There, he went on to study para­le­gal law for two years and was cer­ti­fied.

He comes from a mu­si­cal fam­i­ly, too. He re­mem­bers hear­ing his moth­er singing on lo­cal tele­vi­sion, as well as his un­cle, Harold Bar­riteau. This self-taught mu­si­cian de­clared that the pi­ano was his in­stru­ment of choice. He said it was his in­nate abil­i­ty to com­pose that led him to even­tu­al­ly adopt this in­stru­ment al­most 12 years ago.