Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

At just 22, Paris Coutain is carv­ing out a dis­tinc­tive space with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mu­sic in­dus­try, blend­ing per­for­mance, so­cial com­men­tary and genre-cross­ing ap­peal.

The Pi­ar­co res­i­dent—for­mer win­ner of the NGC San Fest (2019) and the Sec­ondary Schools In­tel­lec­tu­al Chut­ney So­ca Monarch (2020)—is recog­nised for his ver­sa­til­i­ty across ca­lyp­so, so­ca and chut­ney so­ca. His 2026 ca­lyp­so re­lease, Through the Eyes of Her, con­fronts the so­cial chal­lenges faced by women, un­der­scor­ing his com­mit­ment to us­ing mu­sic as a plat­form for re­flec­tion and di­a­logue.

Coutain at­tend­ed Mal­abar RC Pri­ma­ry School and St Joseph Sec­ondary School be­fore grad­u­at­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2024 with a bach­e­lor’s de­gree in fine arts (per­form­ing arts). Since then, his name has fea­tured promi­nent­ly in en­ter­tain­ment head­lines, pro­pelled by com­pe­ti­tion suc­cess, vi­ral ex­po­sure and mo­ments of artis­tic con­tro­ver­sy.

In 2025, he reached the fi­nals of the Youth cat­e­go­ry of the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on com­pe­ti­tion, earn­ing praise for his abil­i­ty to sing and dance si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly on stage. That mo­men­tum car­ried in­to the dig­i­tal space with his Zess track Fix It Fe­lix, which sur­passed one mil­lion views across so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

Lat­er that year, Coutain en­tered the Sab­ga Open Verse Chal­lenge (June 2025), launched by three-time In­ter­na­tion­al Pow­er So­ca Monarch win­ner Voice. His verse went vi­ral, se­cur­ing the pub­lic vote and lead­ing to a stu­dio col­lab­o­ra­tion with Voice on the of­fi­cial Sab­ga remix.

As the 2026 so­ca sea­son ap­proach­es, Coutain has al­ready re­leased Brush, a smooth so­ca track co-writ­ten with Em­manuel Rud­der. He is al­so prepar­ing to roll out Mag­ic In The Air, a chut­ney so­ca pro­duced by Mot­to on the SLS Rid­dim, fea­tur­ing Bla­ka Dan, Salty, Mot­to and M1.

Writ­ten by Coutain, Mag­ic In The Air ex­plores ten­sions be­tween Afro- and In­do-Trinida­di­ans through a “for­bid­den love” nar­ra­tive. He has in­di­cat­ed plans to en­ter the song in the up­com­ing Chut­ney So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

Be­yond mu­sic, Coutain is ac­tive in dance, act­ing, mod­el­ling and vi­su­al art, and has built a strong so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing that con­tin­ues to am­pli­fy both his artis­tic out­put and pub­lic im­age.