KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

His hit sin­gle The Great­est Bend Over con­tin­ues to dom­i­nate Ap­ple Mu­sic’s top songs from T&T. The song has earned him a se­mi-fi­nal­ist po­si­tion in the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­ons sched­uled to take place at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) to­day.

Yung Bred­da (Akhen­aton Lewis) will be mak­ing his ca­lyp­so de­but at D’Kaiso Dy­nasty, for­mer­ly Kaiso House, for Car­ni­val 2025.

“I be­lieve in foun­da­tion; I want to be a great per­son,” he said.

“In or­der to be a great per­son, you must know your foun­da­tion. If you don’t know your foun­da­tion, you can­not build.”

He cred­it­ed his man­ag­er, Op­ti­mus Pro­duc­tion, for be­ing the brain be­hind the re­lease of We Rise.

“Every time I have a song writ­ten, I try for it to be writ­ten around me,” he said. “The song is a mes­sage not just to Trinidad alone but to all peo­ple. Most im­por­tant­ly, peo­ple of colour, we need to unite and come to­geth­er as peo­ple and re­alise that no mat­ter what, we could be some­thing in life.

“Stop the rob­bing and the killing and do­ing evil stuff. Come to­geth­er and form a foot­ball side; don’t come to­geth­er and form a gang, that’s not the right thing.”

From steam to so­ca to ca­lyp­so to chut­ney, Yung Bred­da is all about ex­pand­ing his reper­toire.

“Be­ing so ver­sa­tile is like a chal­lenge for my­self. I be­lieve the first com­pe­ti­tion in life, the first test you have to pass, is your­self,” he said. “You must be able to know your­self, know what you can do, and know what you can’t do. Yet still there is noth­ing you can’t do; if you learn and prac­tise you will be able to do it.”

Yung Bred­da’s jour­ney to the spot­light start­ed from very hum­ble be­gin­nings.

“My de­ceased grand­moth­er, may her soul rest in peace, is the first per­son who re­alised I had a mu­si­cal tal­ent,” he ex­plained.

“She was the first per­son to buy a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment for me, which was a drum be­cause I used to burst all the buck­ets in the yard.

“She used to hus­tle on the dump, which is the labasse (Beetham Land­fill); she used to get rags, which are old clothes, come home and wash them and sell clothes in the com­mu­ni­ty. The buck­et I used to be beat­ing, that’s what she used to wash the clothes. She used to col­lect bot­tles too, to sell.”

Yung Bred­da was al­so steered in the di­rec­tion of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty by his fam­i­ly. “My aunt, who is de­ceased, my fa­ther’s sis­ter owned a Bap­tist church. Now my cousin Aun­ty Pinky is run­ning it,” he added.

“I start­ed beat­ing drums in church, then I joined the Cadet Force band. I moved from the drum­line and start­ed play­ing brass, which was the trom­bone. I start­ed to play trom­bone in sec­ondary school, and from there I just kept ex­celling in mu­sic.”

Singing came at a lat­er point in life.

“I start­ed lim­ing with a group of friends in Sea Lots; one is Fresh King and Flow Boss, and that is how I start­ed to de­vel­op singing,” he said.

“I couldn’t sing; I prob­a­bly al­ways had the tal­ent, but be­ing around them brings it out.”

While Yung Bred­da con­tin­ued to hone his skills and rise

He ad­mit­ted that grow­ing up in a ‘hot spot’ com­mu­ni­ty was chal­leng­ing.

“You have to know there is a so­lu­tion for every prob­lem,” he said.

“Com­ing from Sea Lots, when I came out­side, I re­mem­bered I was not liv­ing in any posh com­mu­ni­ty when I was grow­ing up and see­ing some­body to look up to and said I want to be a doc­tor, I want to be a lawyer. I saw hus­tlers; I saw men sell­ing their weed, do­ing what­ev­er they need­ed to do by any means nec­es­sary to take care of their fam­i­ly.”

The 24-year-old en­ter­tain­er had a mes­sage for the youth in so­ci­ety.

“I want every ghet­to youth out there to know it’s what you let af­fect you,” he said.

“Just be­cause you are com­ing from some­where that has a stig­ma does not mean you are a stig­ma. You can bring a dif­fer­ence to your life, your cir­cle, and your com­mu­ni­ty.”

Keep­ing it re­al

The artiste keeps it re­al and is not em­bar­rassed to show where he comes from. Just re­cent­ly he post­ed a self­ie video show­ing his Sea Lots sur­round­ings.

“That’s just me show­ing my fol­low­ers and fans where I’m com­ing from,” he said.

“So when I get to the oth­er lev­el, the big man­sion and the best car, the Rolls Royce, you would re­alise this is where he came from. It’s not a fly-by-night thing; it’s a process. It takes time with every­thing; that’s just my way of telling my sto­ry, show­ing them that I am still here and that I’m still hum­ble. And ac­tu­al­ly, where the video was tak­en, that’s the lim­ing zone we call New York Av­enue.”

It’s al­so his way of dri­ving a point for­ward to so­ci­ety. “I am a man com­ing from Sea Lots. I know about it. I’ve been in the mid­dle of it,” he said.

“Peo­ple say the on­ly way out of bad­ness is jail or death, and I prove them wrong. It have a way out, you are the way. I here to show peo­ple to be­lieve, pray, and know that there is a cre­ator above; you will see your way.”

While he does not at­tend church as of­ten as dur­ing his child­hood, Yung Bred­da sets aside the month of April to fast and re­con­nect with God, his way of recharg­ing his spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.