Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Be­fore he be­came the voice wak­ing up the na­tion on The Boom 94.1, Kwe­si “Su­pahype” Lee was al­ready telling Caribbean sto­ries—qui­et­ly, vi­su­al­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly—through a cam­era lens.

Long be­fore ra­dio mi­cro­phones and morn­ing dri­ve-time de­bates, Su­pahype was be­hind the scenes at E-Zone, fram­ing mo­ments that would be­come cul­tur­al mem­o­ry. His lens moved com­fort­ably among gi­ants: in­ter­na­tion­al icons like Bil­ly Ocean and Maxi Priest, and home­grown roy­al­ty whose rise de­fined mod­ern so­ca—De­stra Gar­cia, Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter, Ri­zon and more. He wasn’t just doc­u­ment­ing per­for­mances; he was cap­tur­ing the pulse of a peo­ple in mo­tion.

That in­stinct—to un­der­stand cul­ture from the in­side out—would shape every­thing that fol­lowed.

His tran­si­tion from cam­era­man to cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor was less a leap and more a nat­ur­al evo­lu­tion. At Syn­er­gy TV, Su­pahype be­came part of the cre­ative en­gine that de­fined an era of youth cul­ture in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Mu­sic videos, live broad­casts, cul­tur­al mo­ments—he helped shape how a gen­er­a­tion saw it­self.

Now, with more than a decade of ra­dio ex­cel­lence be­hind him, Su­pahype has tak­en his seat on The Morn­ing Jam on The Boom 94.1, along­side Kir­by and DJ Shane. It’s a plat­form that fits. When Su­pahype speaks, it’s not just com­men­tary—it’s con­text. Per­spec­tive forged through years of build­ing cul­ture from the ground up.

And now, for the first time, he’s stepped ful­ly in­to the mu­sic it­self.

Su­pahype’s de­but so­ca re­lease, D’Realest (feat Zan and Ker­nal Roberts), marks a sig­nif­i­cant mo­ment—not just for him, but for the cul­ture he’s spent years doc­u­ment­ing and de­fend­ing. The track blends raw au­then­tic­i­ty with melod­ic con­fi­dence, pair­ing Su­pahype’s voice with two re­spect­ed artists who em­body lyri­cal in­tegri­ty and mu­si­cal lin­eage.

Across so­cial me­dia, D’Realest is al­ready gain­ing trac­tion—shared or­gan­i­cal­ly, dis­cussed in com­ments, and em­braced not as a nov­el­ty, but as a state­ment. For lis­ten­ers, the song feels earned. It sounds like some­one who has watched the cul­ture long enough to know when it’s time to speak—and sing.

“I’ve spent the bet­ter part of my life watch­ing this cul­ture through a cam­era lens and a stu­dio mi­cro­phone,” Su­pahype re­flects. “I’ve been in the trench­es with the leg­ends—from the soul of Bil­ly Ocean to the high-volt­age en­er­gy of De­stra and Shur­wayne. I know what it looks like when a mo­ment tru­ly clicks.”

That un­der­stand­ing fu­els both his mu­sic and his grow­ing con­cern for the state of the in­dus­try.

Look­ing at to­day’s Car­ni­val and en­ter­tain­ment land­scape, Su­pahype sees move­ment—but not nec­es­sar­i­ly progress. A hus­tle cul­ture has tak­en hold, one where in­di­vid­ual gain in­creas­ing­ly over­shad­ows col­lec­tive lega­cy.

“We are no longer build­ing a lega­cy,” he warns. “We are fight­ing over a cal­en­dar.”

On the most sa­cred nights in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al life—Panora­ma Fi­nals, So­ca Monarch, Di­manche Gras—mas­sive pri­vate events now com­pete di­rect­ly with na­tion­al show­cas­es, pulling au­di­ences away from mo­ments de­signed to unite the coun­try.

“We’re ask­ing peo­ple to choose be­tween a mega-fete and their na­tion­al iden­ti­ty,” he says. “That’s dan­ger­ous.”

He’s clear: this is not an an­ti-par­ty ar­gu­ment. Small, in­ti­mate events are es­sen­tial—they keep nightlife alive. But na­tion­al nights de­mand na­tion­al fo­cus.

“When ten ‘mega-fetes’ run op­po­site Panora­ma or So­ca Monarch, we’re not just split­ting crowds—we’re di­lut­ing de­vo­tion,” Su­pahype ex­plains. “We turn na­tion­al trea­sures in­to just an­oth­er op­tion on a fly­er.”

The long-term im­pact is cul­tur­al ero­sion—re­duced broad­cast val­ue, weak­ened in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal, and an art form slow­ly eat­ing it­self.

He points to glob­al par­al­lels. The Su­per Bowl, he notes, is pro­tect­ed by in­ten­tion. Sin­gu­lar fo­cus cre­ates leg­endary mo­ments. Scat­tered at­ten­tion de­stroys them.

“If so­ca and pan are glob­al prod­ucts—and they are—then they must be treat­ed as pre­mi­um,” he says. “That means pro­tect­ing the Big Three nights. Cre­at­ing space for the na­tion to gath­er on one fre­quen­cy.”

For Su­pahype, D’Realest is more than a de­but song. It’s an ex­ten­sion of a life­long re­la­tion­ship with Caribbean cul­ture—from the lens to the mic, to the mu­sic.

“We have to stop throw­ing big events,” he says, “and start build­ing a na­tion­al move­ment.”

Let the sa­cred nights be­long to the na­tion again. And let the cul­ture—re­al, root­ed and un­apolo­getic—con­tin­ue to rise.