SAN­DRA L BLOOD

mindup.slblood@gmail.com

A love­ly crowd of so­ca lovers took to the 69 Sports Bar & Grill, St Ann’s from 6-9 pm on Jan­u­ary 3 and wit­nessed the of­fi­cial launch of the so­ca mu­sic video, My Head Is Bad, host­ed by Tri­ni Fmili Mat­ter­rz. Guest artistes were Umi Mar­cano and Ter­ry Seales, and dee­jay Sky­line ham­mered in some oth­er sweet mu­sic. My Head Is Bad was writ­ten and pro­duced by mul­ti-tal­ent­ed singer, ac­tor and en­ter­tain­er, S.O. King, and mixed and mas­tered by GQ MAXz­i­MUM.

Hot on the scene, King’s laced with a di­verse spate of cul­tur­al cre­ativ­i­ty giv­en his Ja­maican moth­er, Vin­cent­ian fa­ther and he, Trinida­di­an, born in Trinidad while his par­ents were vis­it­ing for a car­ni­val, thus, the “Trin-Jam-Vince”’s 150-plus songs writ­ten, pro­duced and sung by him, he said, re­flect gen­res of reg­gae, dance­hall, pop, al­ter­na­tive and so­ca.

With an ad­van­tage be­ing in the act­ing world, he’s al­so pro­duced mu­sic videos for most of his re­leas­es and starred in one of the best Caribbean films ti­tled The Wet­man Movie. Apart from oth­er icons, he’s per­formed in con­certs along­side Jah Cure and Vy­bz Kar­tel.

King is eter­nal­ly grate­ful to his pri­ma­ry school teacher who heard him singing and knock­ing a melody on a desk dur­ing a free pe­ri­od while in a class­room, and was told he had a nice voice. His maid­en per­for­mance was for the school’s grad­u­a­tion as prompt­ed by the said teacher, and set­ting a stage, ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions, Kiskidee Car­a­van from age 16, and a chain of oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties flowed. In his late teen years, he was mo­ti­vat­ed by Boyz 2 Men, M&M, Bob Mar­ley, Bu­ju Ban­ton, to name a few, and mix­ing coun­tries with gen­res cre­at­ed his unique­ness.

His pop­u­lar­i­ty soared with the re­lease of his hit song, Bap Bap Bap with one of Ja­maica’s finest artistes, Pam­potay, and from his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the So­ca Monarch semi­fi­nals in 2016 and 2018. The cer­ti­fied mem­ber of the Na­tion­al Reg­istry of Artists and Cul­tur­al Work­ers is the TTCME’s 2018 Best Crossover Artist of the Caribbean, and re­ceived a nom­i­na­tion for the Best So­ca Artist in T&T by the Na­tion­al HYPE Pro­gramme as a mem­ber of COTT.

He said My Head Is Bad was in­spired by Trinidad’s Car­ni­val es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing his ex­pe­ri­ence at the 2016 and ’18 So­ca Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, in ad­di­tion to the im­pact cur­rent and vin­tage so­ca artistes Su­perBlue, Machel, Patrice Roberts, Saucy Wow and Bun­ji made on him and con­tin­ue to make, and he want­ed to do same—leave an im­pact on T&T.

He ex­plained that the video is to jog mem­o­ry, tak­ing you back to how car­ni­val used to be be­fore COVID-19 hit town—its full taste. “Even from the jour­ney to Trinidad, you’re get­ting the fete/par­ty and rev­el­ry vibes; you’re in the mood as though you are in a fete/par­ty. You are on the road in your cos­tume, or if no cos­tume; just in the car­ni­val spir­it with your head re­al­ly bad when you touch down in Trinidad, and you are ready to go.”

He said he caters to the youth mar­ket while stir­ring up even the old­est per­son.

The video opens with a warn­ing of “in­fec­tious mu­sic” with S.O. King on a yacht com­ing to Trinidad for car­ni­val, even risk­ing his life on the bow with drink in hand ex­press­ing sheer ex­hil­a­ra­tion. On the mil­lion­aire yacht is al­so his posse of friends in gay aban­don­ment where he los­es him­self, smoth­ered by them with drink in hand. At the two-day rev­el­ry, S.O. King is then in ec­sta­sy as he finds him­self in a band wined on by a bevy of feath­ered fe­male mas­quer­aders who lap-up the mo­ment with the bad-head King. Dur­ing the frol­ick­ing, King’s had enough and he ends up on a pave­ment un­til an­oth­er Car­ni­val lover comes to his as­sis­tance, but all King could say is “meh head re­al bad, boy!”

Some shots of the video were done on a friend’s yacht and at cer­tain points in Ch­aguara­mas. King wish­es to thank Zy­ro’s Bar, Ground Lev­el, En­ter­tain­ment, Mil­lion­aire Yacht, L’Homme Par­fait, Next Fx, KoKo Krave, Thu­ri­on, Trend­set­ter Trans­porta­tion, N. Rochard, James Johnathan and Is­rael, and Kay Kay & Friends/Mil­lion­aire Yacht Girls.

King is in train to re­lease his oth­er Pow­er So­ca tune High Beam and Groovy So­ca: Don’t Vex With Me. My Head Is Bad is stream­ing on all me­dia plat­forms, and to reach S. O. King: 499-4407 or 486-6582.