KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Her sin­gle Round & Rosie has swept the air­waves by storm. The high-en­er­gy and se­duc­tive so­ca tune quick­ly be­came an overnight in­ter­net sen­sa­tion with its dance chal­lenge.

It’s just the be­gin­ning of what can be ex­pect­ed from bud­ding so­ca queen Nailah Black­man for Car­ni­val 2024.

Con­sid­ered so­ca roy­al­ty, Black­man comes from a promi­nent artis­tic mu­si­cal fam­i­ly.

Her grand­fa­ther was the late Garfield Black­man aka Ras Shorty I, renowned for the cre­ation of so­ca mu­sic. Her moth­er is Ras Shorty I’s el­dest daugh­ter, ca­lyp­son­ian Ab­bi Black­man.

While Black­man ad­mits to liv­ing un­der the lega­cy of the founder of so­ca mu­sic, the tal­ent­ed per­former is carv­ing her own mu­si­cal path.

“The path that he left was a much dif­fer­ent path than I am on right now, but the path that he start­ed on was quite sim­i­lar,” she said.

“Re­gard­less, he is the fa­ther of so­ca and I am a bud­ding queen of so­ca, so it seems about right in align­ment.”

Black­man’s smooth high-pitched vo­cals set her apart from her col­leagues in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

In 2017, she start­ed mak­ing head­lines af­ter the re­lease of the hit Work Out– a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Kes the Band–that now has 21.3 mil­lion views on YouTube. In that year she al­so re­leased the pop­u­lar Bailah Ma­mi.

In 2020, Black­man was fea­tured by Adekun­le Gold on his AG Ba­by. The song be­came Nige­ria’s trend­ing hit that year.

Her 2023 hit Come Home done in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Skin­ny Fab­u­lous was de­scribed by many in the mu­si­cal fra­ter­ni­ty as a mas­ter­piece. The post-pan­dem­ic pore-rais­ing tune was a Road March con­tender. Re­ceiv­ing 106 plays on the road Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, the mega-hit came in sec­ond.

Black­man is al­ready mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the Car­ni­val cir­cuit.

 “Car­ni­val 2024 is go­ing amaz­ing thus far, I think every­thing is work­ing out just the way I want it to,” she said. “I have re­leased ten songs for this Car­ni­val sea­son and I would say six of them are col­labs.”

The so­ca artiste be­gan her sea­son with the re­lease of Jam of the Year quick­ly fol­lowed by Round & Rosie. Both were re­leased via In­ef­fa­ble Records.

“I wrote Round & Rosie when I was in Japan and I was just hav­ing a lot of fun,” she added.

“The song was just a lot of fun for me and I was be­ing just quirky and cheeky on pur­pose. To see the re­sponse that peo­ple have had to the song is just re­flec­tive of the fun I was hav­ing. Peo­ple like things that are gen­uine and fun and I think that is def­i­nite­ly what it was for me. The re­ac­tion has re­al­ly made me feel very con­fi­dent about my­self.”

Hun­dreds in­ter­na­tion­al­ly have re­spond­ed to the song’s dance chal­lenge. The tune which was pro­duced by DJ Taffy and An­son Pro has al­so be­come a pop­u­lar fit­ness tune.

“Lu­na, my dancer, she was the one that re­al­ly in­flu­enced the chal­lenge,” ex­plained Black­man.

“She per­formed live on stage with me at Soakah Ori­gins. The whole idea was that they (win­ners) could per­form live, but there were so many peo­ple from all cor­ners of the Earth. They weren’t there at Ori­gins so we had to just make it fun.”

Black­man has re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion af­ter be­ing fea­tured on the Pan­do­ra Mu­sic Ris­ing Star Bill­board in Times Square, New York.

She won the In­ter­na­tion­al Song­writ­ing Com­pe­ti­tion in 2020 and was nom­i­nat­ed for the BET Awards 2018–View­er’s Choice: Best New In­ter­nal Act.

She plans to con­tin­ue reach­ing for the stars.

“I am ready to achieve all there is to achieve in mu­sic,” she said.

“Every award, every mile­stone. How long it takes me to get there I have no idea. But I see my­self reach­ing the crème of the crop in this mu­sic in­dus­try lo­cal­ly, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.”

A jour­ney she is un­able to do with the sup­port of her hive.

“I am just grate­ful for the sup­port I have re­ceived all around from my fam­i­ly, from my team and from my fans,” she said.

“I be­lieve that I have an ex­treme­ly sol­id foun­da­tion and that is not some­thing I take light­ly, the sup­port of my coun­try is very im­por­tant to me and I have had that all the way and I ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

The artiste hint­ed at more things to come for the Car­ni­val 2024 sea­son.