It was a bless­ing for Bla­ka Dan as he won the first Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on com­pe­ti­tion, with a to­tal score of 387 points and earn­ing the grand prize of $1 mil­lion.

The sec­ond-place win­ner was Yung Bred­da, with $300,000, who al­so won the Bmo­bile Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­on Win­ner, and third place went to Pred­dy, who walked away with $150,000.

The event took place on Feb­ru­ary 20 at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, and the record­ed fi­nale was broad­cast last Fri­day night. All the 11 per­form­ers re­ceived $50,000 up­front for their per­for­mance.

Grena­di­an so­ca artiste Wren­roy Ogiste (Bla­ka Dan), who sang Bless­ing, told Guardian Me­dia that it is a great feel­ing know­ing the amount of work that went in­to the pro­duc­tion.

“I was not ex­pect­ing it to be of this mag­ni­tude, but with the help of my pro­duc­tion man­ag­er Cureleen Stew­art, Co Mas­ter­minds, it was ex­pect­ed that when we saw the kind of work that went in­to mak­ing the per­for­mance great, we felt it was win­ning.”

Asked if the cur­rent for­mat of the com­pe­ti­tion has stay­ing pow­er, Ogiste said the for­mat was new and would take get­ting ac­cus­tomed to, with re­gards to the wait­ing process of the re­sults.

“All oth­er as­pects have a re­fresh­ing vibe. The on­ly thing I would say is the ex­cite­ment, with re­gards to win­ning, as it is not be­ing an­nounced on the said night like the so­ca com­pe­ti­tion in the past. I won­der if it kind of kills the ex­cite­ment a bit and this is me ad­vo­cat­ing for the or­gan­is­ers. I am won­der­ing if they are los­ing mon­ey not stream­ing this live on the said day be­cause So­ca Monarch was a world­wide event, which was streamed. So I do not know if the rev­enue is not the or­gan­is­er’s main fo­cus,” the so­ca artiste said.

Ques­tioned on Yung Bred­da be­ing the favourite dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion, and how he felt be­ing able to rise to the top with sev­er­al points over him, Bla­ka Dan said Yung Bred­da was a very tal­ent­ed in­di­vid­ual. He said their sto­ries were sim­i­lar: ghet­to youths hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time.

On whether the song Bless­ing had any­thing to do with a break-up he ex­pe­ri­enced, Bla­ka Dan said, “It was based on true sto­ries and not nec­es­sar­i­ly a re­la­tion­ship, with re­gards to how peo­ple re­late to the song. I at­tacked it from a re­la­tion­ship stand­point as it would be more en­joy­able. It is a song that you may have deemed a tragedy in your life and came out to be a pos­i­tive.”

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Yung Bred­da (Akhen­aton Lewis) said, “Plac­ing in the top three for my first com­pe­ti­tion is a win by it­self! I am not a fan of com­pe­ti­tions be­cause it brings en­e­mies, but it was an awe­some ex­pe­ri­ence. Who knows what next year will bring? I move on a vibe, and if it leads me that way, well so be it.”

Pro­duc­er of the Ul­ti­mate So­ca Cham­pi­on Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la de­scribes the $8 mil­lion com­pe­ti­tion as a suc­cess, giv­en the time frame that was giv­en to put the pro­duc­tion to­geth­er.

“We were hap­py with the re­sponse of the 4,000 crowd-go­ers and the num­bers that came out on a Thurs­day night. Be­cause we had re­mem­bered that the show was live on a Thurs­day night. So we were hap­py that peo­ple came out and they sup­port­ed their favourite artistes.”

In terms of chal­lenges, he said re­in­stat­ing the faith in the artiste would be a fair com­pe­ti­tion and that the judg­ing cri­te­ria would not be based on the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the song.

“We had to re­in­state that in­to the artiste be­cause a lot were scep­ti­cal in com­pe­ti­tions like these. A lot of them felt like they were go­ing to the past. A big part of it was show­ing peo­ple that, lis­ten, this is a com­pe­ti­tion of in­tegri­ty, of trans­paren­cy, and that they could be judged fair­ly and that the re­sults would be fair,” Pre­cil­la ex­plained.

He not­ed that some were dis­ap­point­ed with the re­sults.

“We had a lot of peo­ple dis­ap­point­ed with the re­sults and what we learned is that no mat­ter the re­sults, you’re go­ing to get that. But we, as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, can’t do any­thing about that. What we can make sure of is that the com­pe­ti­tion has in­tegri­ty and prop­er judg­ing cri­te­ria, which were all tagged and re­viewed by a rep­utable ac­count­ing firm, Ernst & Young,” he stat­ed.

Pre­cil­la added that the com­pe­ti­tion would be back next year once it has sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, along with pri­vate part­ner­ships.