Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Cen­tral’s fire­brand La­dy La­va is turn­ing up the heat as she steps bold­ly in­to the 2026 Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, armed with con­fi­dence, ex­pe­ri­ence and a track that is al­ready gen­er­at­ing a strong buzz.

Born and raised in Cunu­pia, Keisha Har­ris—known on stage as La­dy La­va—has built a rep­u­ta­tion as a pow­er­house with­in the so­ca and dance­hall spaces. Now mak­ing her third ap­pear­ance on the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch stage, she en­ters the com­pe­ti­tion with her com­po­si­tion Cyah Pick, de­ter­mined to fi­nal­ly cap­ture the crown. La­dy La­va said she is rel­ish­ing the mo­ment.

“I am very ex­cit­ed about the semi­fi­nals and I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the op­por­tu­ni­ty,” she said. “The song is do­ing amaz­ing right now. I’m get­ting a lot of sup­port, peo­ple re­al­ly like it. I’m just go­ing in­to the com­pe­ti­tion with a good spir­it and I’m hop­ing to make it to the fi­nals. It’s not my first time in the Chut­ney com­pe­ti­tion, but every time I’m there, it’s a great feel­ing—that ex­cite­ment nev­er fades.”

La­dy La­va’s cur­rent mo­men­tum has been hard to ig­nore. Last year, she cap­tured the in­au­gur­al Zess/Steam Artiste of the Year award at the Caribbean Mu­sic Awards, a mile­stone that un­der­scored her grow­ing in­flu­ence and dom­i­nance with­in the genre.

Her cre­ative jour­ney be­gan ear­ly. As a child, po­et­ry was her first form of ex­pres­sion, and by sec­ondary school her nat­ur­al flair for per­for­mance was al­ready ev­i­dent. While class­mates tapped rhythms on desks, La­dy La­va would spon­ta­neous­ly per­form, com­mand­ing at­ten­tion and hint­ing at the com­mand­ing stage pres­ence she now brings to ma­jor plat­forms.

She record­ed her first track, Bring It Back, in 2008, spend­ing the years that fol­lowed re­fin­ing her sound and artis­tic iden­ti­ty. By 2015, she had re­leased sev­er­al tracks, in­clud­ing Ride It, but her break­through came in 2017 with re­leas­es such as If You Beat It Keep It A Se­cret, Banger Se­crets and the fan favourite Tail Light, which pro­pelled her fur­ther in­to the spot­light.

De­fined by bold con­fi­dence, mag­net­ic charis­ma and un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion, La­dy La­va con­tin­ues to push bound­aries and de­fy ex­pec­ta­tions. As her artistry evolves, she re­mains com­mit­ted to liv­ing un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly while in­spir­ing oth­ers through fear­less mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion.

Her cat­a­logue in­cludes pop­u­lar sin­gles such as No Horn, Bob The Builder, Ring Fin­ger, Bare Bounce, Heavy Rollers, No Stand­ing Up (with Spice), You Have A Gyal, Char­lie and Yardy.

Southex chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer George Singh con­firmed that 34 artistes are ex­pect­ed to com­pete in the semi­fi­nal rounds on Fri­day at Fla­va Vil­lage in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. The grand fi­nal is sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 8 at Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do—where La­dy La­va hopes to turn heat in­to his­to­ry.