Nigel Teles­ford

Dy­nam­ic young tal­ent and ris­ing star Yung Bred­da (Akhen­aton Lewis) is shak­ing up the mu­sic scene once again with the re­lease of a pow­er­ful new so­ca track ti­tled Coul­da, just in time for Christ­mas and the fast-ap­proach­ing Car­ni­val sea­son.

Packed with up­lift­ing lyrics and ground­ed in re­al-life re­flec­tion, the song ar­rives at a mo­ment when the na­tion is grap­pling with height­ened po­lit­i­cal ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela—yet, its mes­sage cuts through the noise with a call for per­son­al ac­count­abil­i­ty and choos­ing val­ues over the temp­ta­tions of the fast life.

“This is a re­al, re­al song,” Lewis said. “It speaks about the choic­es we face dai­ly in re­al life. It hits home for me and my per­son­al jour­ney, and I know it will con­nect with many youths from the ghet­to like me who are faced with temp­ta­tions that go against the morals, val­ues and in­tegri­ty their grand­moth­ers, aun­ties and par­ents would have taught them.”

In­tense and au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal, Coul­da re­flects on the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions that shape a young man grow­ing up in a chal­leng­ing en­vi­ron­ment. Its time­ly re­lease of­fers a much-need­ed an­them of re­silience for young peo­ple, shift­ing at­ten­tion away from in­ter­na­tion­al anx­i­eties and to­wards the pow­er of in­di­vid­ual choice.

Writ­ten and pro­duced by Jue­lio Nel­son and record­ed at Op­ti­mus Pro­duc­tions’ San Fer­nan­do stu­dio, the track dropped on Wednes­day evening to im­me­di­ate buzz—light­ing up so­cial me­dia, spark­ing con­ver­sa­tion and draw­ing a wave of pos­i­tive feed­back from fans.

The Great­est Bend Over singer is al­so gear­ing up to head­line the launch of So­Da, a new en­ter­tain­ment con­cept and brand merg­ing so­ca and dance­hall mu­sic and cul­ture. Yung Bred­da is ex­pect­ed to per­form the new sin­gle live for the first time at the So­Da launch to­day at Fuzion Night­club, Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann’s.

In a state­ment, event or­gan­is­ers de­scribed So­Da as “the on­ly place to see Yung Bred­da per­form all his ateamy hits and get fa­mil­iar with his new re­leas­es be­fore Christ­mas and Car­ni­val take over.” They are en­cour­ag­ing all fans of Steam, So­ca lovers and Dance­hall crews to come to­geth­er “for an as­sem­bly cel­e­brat­ing Caribbean mu­sic and cul­ture to close off 2025.”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the So­Da Move­ment is build­ing a data­base and will roll out a se­ries of events, col­lab­o­ra­tions and mu­sic record­ings show­cas­ing a dy­nam­ic syn­er­gy of SO­ca and DAnce­hall. The aim is to high­light the har­mo­ny, ver­sa­til­i­ty, sim­i­lar­i­ties and di­ver­si­ty of both gen­res through unique­ly cu­rat­ed for­mats.

Event co­or­di­na­tor Jerome An­toine—an en­ter­pris­ing mu­sic pro­duc­er, Tribe Mu­sic Truck Man­ag­er and for­mer RED 96.7 FM ra­dio DJ—stressed that So­Da is not a new genre, but a cul­tur­al move­ment.

“The So­Da move­ment is de­signed to cre­ate, ex­plore and am­pli­fy syn­er­gies with­in the So­ca and Dance­hall in­dus­tries,” An­toine said.

“For over four decades we’ve lis­tened to, cre­at­ed and cel­e­brat­ed mem­o­ries with both gen­res. We’ve even cre­at­ed our own sub­gen­res like Trini­bad and Steam. Com­ing out of the pan­dem­ic, we saw a void in the en­ter­tain­ment scene and felt the need to blend the two worlds in a more en­gag­ing and edu-tain­ing way.”

He added that with Christ­mas and Car­ni­val ap­proach­ing, “the time is right to cel­e­brate these two gen­res and cul­tures.”

“The en­ter­tain­ment cli­mate is un­cer­tain right now,” he said, “so we might as well en­joy the peace­ful times we have left.”

The So­Da event will fea­ture a spe­cial per­for­mance by Yung Bred­da along­side guest acts rep­re­sent­ing both so­ca and dance­hall. DJs Travis World, Salty, DJ Prodi­gy and of­fi­cial So­Da DJ, Lord Hype, will keep the crowd en­er­gised be­fore and be­tween per­for­mances.

Spon­sored by CK Im­ports, FT Car Ser­vices and Town Cen­tre Mall—with wel­come drinks from Rude­boy and Hen­nessy Co­gnac in the VIP sec­tion—the event starts at 9 pm at a venue not af­fect­ed by cur­rent noise re­stric­tions. Against the back­drop of on­go­ing de­bate over the Prime Min­is­ter’s ban on Car­ni­val fetes at na­tion­al sport­ing are­nas, the So­Da Move­ment aims to cel­e­brate Caribbean mu­sic in a se­cure, self-con­tained space at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel.

One lucky pa­tron will win a brunch vouch­er cour­tesy the ho­tel, while so­ca artistes use the plat­form to pro­mote new re­leas­es and dance­hall fans en­joy one of the fi­nal bash­ments be­fore the fes­tive sea­son trans­forms the en­ter­tain­ment land­scape.

So­cial me­dia cre­ators can al­so ex­pect on-site live video in­ter­views from Over­time Me­dia, ET&T, EBuz­zTT and MY­OB.Enttt.