SAN­DRA L BLOOD

John­ny Black­man is a T&T-born so­ca record­ing artiste who hails from a large fam­i­ly of 14 chil­dren. He grew up liv­ing mod­est­ly in the town of Pi­paro, and is proud to be the son of the late award-win­ning mu­si­cian Ras Shorty I (Garfield Black­man).

Black­man re­calls that his fa­ther, the cre­ator of the so­ca genre, en­cour­aged all his chil­dren to ex­plore their cre­ative tal­ents. As a re­sult, each sib­ling be­came an ex­cep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed mu­si­cian or vo­cal­ist, and many—in­clud­ing John­ny—were draft­ed in­to the fam­i­ly band es­tab­lished by their fa­ther, The Love Cir­cle, with John­ny join­ing at just 11 years old.

He ad­mired how his sib­lings blos­somed in di­verse fields as they grew old­er, while he fo­cused on hon­ing his own path. Even­tu­al­ly, Black­man mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States, where he con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ing his tal­ent and gave so­ca mu­sic his own vi­brant twist.

Black­man craft­ed a unique style of so­ca in­fused with African, Latin, and hip-hop el­e­ments, cre­at­ing en­er­getic and rhyth­mic bal­lads that pro­pelled him on­to the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. His per­for­mances have tak­en him to au­di­ences in Thai­land, In­dia, Malaysia, Tai­wan, Sin­ga­pore, and across the US.

Set­tling in Cal­i­for­nia, he per­formed with sev­er­al bands, in­clud­ing Up­stream, where he col­lab­o­rat­ed with his broth­ers Haile and Dereck Black­man. As a so­lo artiste, he has re­leased sev­en songs—There for You, Put it on Me, Tonight, Catch You, Saucy Body, Woman, and Alive.

Black­man de­scribes his mu­sic as feel-good so­ca in­flu­enced by artistes like Kes the Band, Er­phaan Alves, Blaxx, his niece Nailah Black­man, oth­er Caribbean mu­si­cians—and top­ping the list, his fa­ther.

His lat­est sin­gle, Whine Up, is a fu­sion of so­ca, Afrobeat, and dance­hall, which he says has been met with phe­nom­e­nal re­sponse.

In­spired by his fa­ther’s deep pas­sion for love, Black­man re­cent­ly re­leased his own cov­er of the love song “First Time” in ki­zom­ba and kon­pa gen­res. The song was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Ein­stein Brown, who grant­ed Black­man full cre­ative free­dom to rein­ter­pret it and add his per­son­al touch. Brown ex­pressed grat­i­tude to Black­man for em­brac­ing the song, which he orig­i­nal­ly wrote for his girl­friend dur­ing a va­ca­tion.

“I’ve al­ways loved and ac­tu­al­ly liked the song,” Black­man said.

“It’s a love con­ver­sa­tion that tells the sto­ry of dream­ing with a woman and plan­ning a fu­ture to­geth­er.”

In this sooth­ing, slow-tem­po ren­di­tion, rewrit­ten by Kim­ber­ly, the man pro­fess­es to the woman that it’s first-time love, and that she’s all he needs.

Black­man proud­ly show­cas­es his Tri­ni roots in the cov­er art of the sin­gle. The pho­tog­ra­phy was done by Lisa Car­away, the cov­er art­work by Lin­da Lopez, and the song was mixed and mas­tered by Sajobeat.

First Time is avail­able on Ap­ple Mu­sic and Spo­ti­fy, and will soon be re­leased on Ve­vo. A mu­sic video is al­so in pro­duc­tion.